Last Fan Standing Collection
by Killaurey
Summary: 30 Days. 30 prompts. 30 different KakaSaku short stories. Done for the Last Fan Standing Challenge on the KakaSaku Dreamwidth community for the month of January.
1. 2012: Day 1: Transient

Title: Transient  
>Author: Killaurey<br>Word Count: 488  
>Rating: T<p>

Written for Day 1 of the Last Fan Standing Challenge on KakaSaku's Dreamwidth community.

**Prompt: Balloon Animal**

* * *

><p>The festival night around them is tumultuous, joyous and heavy. Under a moon-kissed cherry tree, Kakashi stands with Sakura. She's smiling. He had been. Now he stares at what she holds. "Sakura," he says, "I don't—"<p>

Her smile falters as she looks at the balloon animal in her hands. "But it's a dog," Sakura says, all bright-eyed earnestness and hope. "See, look, I even had them draw on Pakkun's cape."

Kakashi fights off the urge to shudder successfully. He's noticed that and, more than anything else about it, finds the drawn on cape to inspire nothing but revulsion. "It's well done, even," he says, trying not to recoil. "But—"

"You don't like it." He doesn't have to look at her to know she's got one perfectly manicured eyebrow raised.

He feels guilty. "I really-_deeply_-appreciate the thought, Sakura." Kakashi tilts her chin up and steals a kiss from her. Her lips are the softest he's ever touched. "I do," he says.

"I believe you." She sighs as she turns the dog over in her hands. "Will you tell me why you don't like it? You said you like festivals so I thought, maybe, there'd be only good memories here."

Kakashi toys with a bit of her hair—most of it is pinned up with chopsticks, only a few tendrils hang bewitchingly loose—and thinks of what to say.

"You promised me," she says, once the silence has stretched to nearly ten minutes, "that we'd try to talk about these things. I can't know unless you tell me." Her green eyes are warm, concerned and caring. "Did you want to talk about it another time and just enjoy the evening?"

He could drown in those eyes. They're what get him to answer, even though she's given him an out. "I don't like balloons," Kakashi says, "because they don't last."

She tilts her head, inviting him to kiss her neck as she thinks. He obliges her. "Most things don't last," she says, finally. "Even this festival will be all cleaned up and gone tomorrow."

"The festival will come back." Kakashi elaborates. "Have you ever heard of a balloon animal that's come back after it's popped?"

"That's not possible," she says softly, with understanding. "You can get another made but—"

"The one you had is gone," he finishes with her.

Sakura's gaze is solemn. "Lives are like that too."

Kakashi steals another kiss. She _does _understand. "I prefer to think they're like festivals. They'll keep coming back."

"All right," she says, after a spate of kissing that's left them breathless. "Like festivals." Sakura looks at the balloon animal she's still holding. "What shall I do with him?"

"Leave him at the temple as an offering. The gods can look after him." He loves her more for taking him seriously when all she does is nod. "Then—let's dance."

She obliges him and the night ends in laughter.


	2. 2012: Day 2: The Script

Title: The Script  
>Author: Killaurey<br>Word Count: 499  
>Rating: T<p>

Written for Day 2 of the Last Fan Standing Challenge on KakaSaku's Dreamwidth community.

**Prompt: Oh la la**

* * *

><p>Sakura peers winsomely at Kakashi over a bowl of ice cream.<p>

He eyes her dubiously.

No doubt, she thinks, he's noticed the pattern. It's the third week in a row that they've come out here, to this ice cream stand, and each week she's asked him to do something embarrassing.

It's all Ino's fault.

Sakura ignores that she's equally to blame. That this is _their _idea.

This time she's come prepared with a tiny voice recorder and a script.

She licks her spoon. "Kakashi," Sakura says, "I'm wondering if—"

"No."

Sakura frowns. "You didn't let me finish."

"It's still no," he insists. "Not after the last two weeks."

"People will forget about it eventually," Sakura wheedles. "Gai-sensei thought that dress looked smash—"

"Sakura," Kakashi says, "if you love me, you will never mention _that _again."

"Okay," she agrees easily. After all, she's got pictures and the negatives are well hidden. "But will you _please_consider doing this week's—"

"No."

"It's nothing public," she lies. "Only you and I will hear."

"And Ino," he corrects. "I'm aware of that."

Sakura shrugs. "Shikamaru will be doing this too—doesn't that make you feel better?"

"No," he decides. "I just feel sorry for the both of us."

"I know," she says, "that last week was a bit… much." It had been _amazing_. "But this week is much simpler! We can do it here."

Despite himself, he looks intrigued. "What am I supposed to do?"

Sakura beams. "It's nothing bad," she promises, pulling out the script to hand it to him. "You'd be reading what's in blue."

He reads it, his eyebrow climbing higher with each page. Eventually he sets it down and just _looks _at her.

"What are the odds," he asks, "that Shikamaru is reading the other half?"

Sakura fidgets. "Er, quite high, I'm afraid."

He grunts. "I thought so."

"Will you do it?" She hopes so. She's no good at begging.

"Oh my darling," Kakashi reads incredulously, "you're so gorgeous I'm left breathless—the only thing I can say is 'oh la la' and even then it's a poor substitute?"

"You're saying 'oh la la' wrong," she says, squashing the urge to giggle. "It's got to be—sexier." Sakura drops her voice, making it low and sultry. "_Oh la la_."

Kakashi eyes her. "This is _not _a sexy script."

"It could be," Sakura says, "if you made it that way. I have every faith in your ability to turn anything sexy."

He rubs his neck. "What do I get for doing this?"

"Me," she says, smiling at him. "Any way you want me."

"Well," Kakashi says dryly. "_Oh la la_." This time, he manages to say it so well it makes her shiver.

Sakura readies the recorder.

Next week, she thinks, will be a harder sell. Especially once he finds out what she and Ino will do with the recordings.

But next week is next week.

She'll find a way to talk Kakashi around when the time comes.


	3. 2012: Day 3: Pink Bear & White Bear

Title: Pink Bear & White Bear's Son  
>Author: Killaurey<br>Word Count: 498  
>Rating: T<br>Notes: AU. Very AU.

Written for Day 3 of the Last Fan Standing Challenge on KakaSaku's Dreamwidth community.

**Prompt: Cuddly Face**

* * *

><p>Once upon a time in a place that was far, far away there was a teddy bear. This teddy bear had grass green buttons for eyes, a black button for a nose, and a bright red ribbon around her neck. Her smile was stitched on in red and her plush, cuddly fur was bright pink.<p>

Because of that the children who played with her had named her Pink Bear. It was not a very imaginative name but they were not very imaginative children. Their games were always the same; endless rounds of tea, being tossed around and clung to with dirty hands that smutched her ribbon, of being dropped in the mud and then washed.

Despite the lack of imagination she was well loved and so Pink Bear was as happy as a teddy bear could be.

That all changed when, one birthday, someone gifted the youngest child with a new teddy bear. This one had silky white hair that stuck up in all directions, dark button eyes and a smile stitched in black. His ribbon was dark blue.

The children loved him and within a week were calling him White Bear's Son for almost immediately one of his button eyes went missing and the children cried '_Mama, that's amazing! Just like the man in your story!'_and nothing else would do for a name.

Pink Bear was left, alone and unloved, high up on her shelf.

She became sad and her stiff arms drooped and her head felt heavy. Surely it was only a matter of time before she was tossed out with the other forgotten toys.

But she never was and as the years went by she remained alone up on her shelf until Pink Bear could only assume that she'd been forgotten.

White Bear's Son, in his place of honour on the mantle, was better off as the children grew and grew until they were uninterested in playing with teddy bears because he was still remembered. Still loved. Still picked up fondly now and then and hugged.

Pink Bear drooped and listed to the side and her button eyes grew dust-dull.

"Look!" called one of the children, even more years later, when the child was no longer physically a child. Large hands lifted Pink Bear off the shelf and shook her. Dust flew everywhere her button eyes were wiped. "Ah, poor girl, you've been all alone up there, haven't you?"

Pink Bear couldn't answer, of course, but the once-a-child seemed to understand her drooping head well enough. The grown child looked around and, with a laugh, set Pink Bear down beside White Bear's Son.

Her head drooped so that the top of her head brushed White Bear's Son's fluffy, snuggly cheek. White Bear's Son did not seem to mind.

Neither did Pink Bear, for she was no longer alone.

And they both lived happily ever after, sitting over the mantle, where soon enough there would be more children to play with the both of them.

* * *

><p>Please let me know what you think! Now that I'm caught up, this will be updated (hopefully) daily, if I can manage to keep in the challenge.<p> 


	4. 2012: Day 4: Word Games

Title: Word Games  
>Author: Killaurey<br>Word Count: 472  
>Rating: T<p>

Written for Day 4 of the Last Fan Standing Challenge on KakaSaku's Dreamwidth community.

**Prompt: Cataglottism  
><strong>

* * *

><p>It was a little known fact that all kunoichi were, at one point in their career, regardless of skill level, given the internal mission of coming up with codenames for external missions and to write them on the labels of countless mission scrolls.<p>

Sakura scribbled down something that sounded ominous and set her latest scroll aside. She stretched, feeling her back crack.

Ino looked up at the sound. "You know," she said, "this would be a lot easier if these _weren't _blank scrolls. It's pretty weird, don't you think, that they give them codenames before the missions are ever commissioned?"

Since Ino had said the same thing half an hour ago, Sakura considered ignoring her but decided that talking was better than, well, doing this job. _Thank god_, Sakura thought, _we only have four more days of this._

"They can't exactly have us make up codenames _after _all the confidential details are there," Sakura pointed out reasonably.

"Still," Ino said. "Did I tell you I got four missions last year all codenamed 'beware'?"

Sakura laughed incredulously. "You're joking!"

"I'm not," Ino insisted. "We've got to do better than that, right?"

"Well, yeah…," Sakura said slowly and bit her lip thoughtfully. "But there are only so many ways to name a mission after something to do with a mission."

"Use that big brain of yours," Ino ordered, leaning back in the rickety chair and managing to look comfortable somehow, "and tell me if there's a specific rule about naming them after missions."

That was easy. Sakura could answer that in her sleep. "No," she said, "there isn't."

Ino's grin was mischievous. "Then why don't we label them whatever the hell we want? People will spend _ages_trying to figure out how the names match the missions."

Despite herself, Sakura was intrigued. "Should we do a theme?"

"If you want," Ino said offhandedly, already reaching for a new scroll. "I think I'm going to use… hm… histaminergic." Ino wrote it down and set the scroll aside looking pleased with herself. "And then… somatopleures and autotonsorialist."

"Nice," Sakura said laughing. "But seriously?"

"Of course," Ino replied with a sniff. "I'm always serious. Get to work. They can't all be in my handwriting you know."

* * *

><p>Two weeks later, Sakura was relaxing on a park bench when Kakashi showed up holding a mission scroll. "Yo," she said, which seemed to discomfit him. "Leaving on a mission?"<p>

He held up the scroll and she spotted her writing. "Cataglottism?"

"What of it?" she asked, struggling to keep a straight face.

"It's your writing," he observed.

"Yes," she agreed.

He considered that. "Is it a hint?"

"Kakashi," she said, as innocent as a spring mist, "if you come back safely, I promise we can engage in cataglottism as much as you want."

"I see." He sounded amused. "It's _incentive_."


	5. 2012: Day 5: Word Games II

Title: Word Games II  
>Author: Killaurey<br>Word Count: 409  
>Rating: T<br>Notes: This IS a continuation from the last story. Because it was the only way I could think to use today's prompt.

Written for Day 5 of the Last Fan Standing Challenge on KakaSaku's Dreamwidth community.

**Prompt: **Krukolibidinous****

* * *

><p>She was painting her toenails when Kakashi showed up without knocking on her door. He came in through her window. Sakura wriggled her fingers at him in greeting and went back to trying to decide if she wanted every toe to be a different colour or if she should stick with one colour all the way through.<p>

He had a mission scroll. She wondered which label it had gotten.

"Sakura," Kakashi said. "Don't you feel that you and Ino went a little… overboard with the names for the scrolls?"

"No," she said, deciding that different colours would be fun and if it looked horrible, well, closed toe sandals were in this year. "Better than all of them being named 'dangerous' and 'beware' and 'watch out', right?"

"_Krukolibidinous?_"

Sakura had to think about that one. "Did I write that?"

"It's your writing," he said dryly. "How many did you do if you're forgetting which ones are yours?"

She shrugged. "Quite a few."

"I liked engaging in cataglottism," Kakashi told her, leaning against the sofa. "And I didn't even mind missions where the words were _utter nonsense _and designed to mess with my brain, but this one is…"

"Krukolibidinous?" Sakura said, grinning slyly at him. "I'll admit it's not as fun as the other word. It's more like, hmmm… the ultimate tease, I guess. I mean, just the act of _staring_."

Kakashi looked at the scroll for a moment. "Are _all_ the mission scrolls labelled things like this?"

"You're just lucky," Sakura said helpfully, going back to her toes. "Some people are getting ones about hair cutting and cells and speaking foolishly." Gai had gotten that last one. Sakura and Ino had nearly peed themselves with laughter when they'd found out.

"… do I want to know?"

Sakura grinned. "Inaniloquent."

"You're just making up words now," Kakashi accused.

"I'm not." she insisted. "Either way, you're stuck with what you've got."

He just shook his head. "I've got to go," Kakashi told her. "And when I get back, I'll do a lot more than stare."

"Just think," she said cheerfully, as he turned to go. "You could've gotten something like jumentous and then I'd _never_ want to be with you. And then krukolibidinous is all you'd have."

"I'll… keep that in mind," he said dryly. "Once I figure out what that means."

"You'd smell," she said, helpfully not telling him exactly what he'd smell like. "Badly."

"I'm leaving now, Sakura."

She laughed.


	6. 2012: Day 6: Rock It

Title: Rock It  
>Author: Killaurey<br>Word Count: 295  
>Rating: T<p>

Written for Day 6 of the Last Fan Standing Challenge on KakaSaku's Dreamwidth community.

**Prompt: Foreign Tongue**

* * *

><p>Dance is like a foreign tongue to Kakashi. The hard beats and soft notes slide down him, through him, shaking him, like murmured whispers that he can't quite grasp the meaning of. He leans against the bar, his drink untouched by him, as he studies the room, trying to learn this language.<p>

It's Ino's birthday, her nineteenth. He knows her age because it's Sakura's age. He's at this party because Sakura asked him to.

It's Sakura that he watches the most. He watches as Sakura dances and each twist of her eloquent arms and shake of her daring hips and flare of her scandalously short skirt resonate through him, revealing new bits and pieces of something he's never considered before.

He wants to dance. With her.

He doesn't know how. Even as the music begins to shake him to pieces with the need to go and join her, he hesitates.

Then she's there, an angel with a bent halo, unruly hair, bright green eyes and flushed cheeks. "Dance with me!" she cries.

"I don't know how," he tells her, unable to take his eyes off her for a second as she sways and holds out a hand to him.

"Don't worry," Sakura says, over the noise. "I'll teach you. Follow my lead."

He lets her pull him out on the floor and once there, she immediately spins him into the music until it feels like there's nothing in the world but her, the sound, and the rushing of his heart as he picks up new bits and pieces of a tongue he's never tried learning before.

Looking at her, so happy even with his pitiful attempts and fumbling steps, Kakashi realizes he's going to be making the effort to learn it properly from now on.


	7. 2012: Day 7: Prison Break

Title: Prison Break  
>Author: Killaurey<br>Word Count: 500  
>Rating: T<br>Notes: This is a) a crossover with _Tiger & Bunny_ and b) will likely become a full-sized fic at some point.

Written for Day 7 of the Last Fan Standing Challenge on KakaSaku's Dreamwidth community.

**Prompt: **First line MUST be: Well, that's different.**  
><strong>

* * *

><p>"Well, that's different." Ino sets down the newspaper and looks at him.<p>

Shikamaru takes a long sip of his coffee, contemplating her gaze—troubled but not angry—and asks the million dollar question. "What's different?" Then, because he can't resist teasing her, "Blue Rose got a new outfit?"

Ino gives him a dark, dark look. "Funny," she snits, "when you're a fan of _Rock Bison_."

"That's Chouji," Shikamaru insists, "not me."

"Uh huh." Her gaze is skeptical. He refuses to concede that maybe there's a reason for it to be.

"Okay," Shikamaru says, "what's _different _then?"

Ino slides the newspaper over to his side of the table and then leans to point her sharp nails at one article. "Read this," she says, tapping it.

Shikamaru lowers his gaze. The headline reads **Two Escape From Abbas Prison**.

"_Sakura_'s escaped?" he says, as he looks up from the article. "And Kakashi too? How? They were both in power suppressing cells. Abbas Prison was built to handle those with NEXT powers." _Like us,_ he doesn't say. It's the truth though.

Ino, still looking troubled is pacing now. "I don't know," she says. "I'm sure the heroes will catch them—they'll want that all over Hero TV."

He scowls at her, noting the way her hands are clenched against her sides. "All you can say is 'well, that's different' about it? Sakura is-"

"_Was_."

Shikamaru knows better than to push that particular point. "Was, then—_was_ your best friend."

"Until she and that _old man _of hers murdered Sasuke! I testified against them in court, Shikamaru. I'd do it again. I hope the Heroes catch them. I'm not friends with murderers."

"No?"

They both freeze.

They haven't heard Sakura's voice in five years but the person who leans in their door, with straggly pink hair and a prison uniform, is definitely Sakura. Shikamaru feels ill. Blue light glows from every line of Sakura's body.

Ino, somewhat predictably, goes straight to rage. "What do you want, Haruno?"

Sakura looks at her. "Your help."

"My help?" Ino says, choking on laugh though for the life of him Shikamaru can't figure out what's so funny—maybe nothing is. "After what you did?"

Shadows cross Sakura's face. "I fucked up," she says quietly. "I don't argue that. Ino, _please_, more than ever before—I need you."

Ino bares her teeth in a parody of a smile. "I don't help murderers." She makes an ill-advised lunge at Sakura, who catches her neatly and twists her around by the arm.

"I don't want to hurt you," Sakura says, looking at him, perhaps because Ino has proved to be unreasonable. "Please," she says, "Kakashi's dying."

Blue light flares around his outline and Shikamaru's voice is low and dangerous when he answers her. The shadows around his feet thicken. "Let Ino _go_."

"I can't," Sakura says, looking like she truly regrets it. "I'm sorry. I need her. _We _need her."

Then she's gone and Ino is gone with her.

Shikamaru swears.


	8. 2012: Day 8: Waiting Game

Title: Waiting Game  
>Author: Killaurey<br>Word Count: 280  
>Rating: T<p>

Written for Day 8 of the Last Fan Standing Challenge on KakaSaku's Dreamwidth community.

**Prompt: Firefly**

* * *

><p>Kakashi was three days, four hours and seventeen minutes late.<p>

Around her darkness had fallen like a shroud, lit only in patchy bits and pieces by the far off village's lights and the ghostly glow of fireflies.

Sakura, a dark cloak around her shoulders, waited under a tree and counted the minutes.

If she'd been near home, she'd have waited there. It was always, somehow, less nerve-wracking to endure the dreadful time between a mission's supposed end and a mission's actual end then. Perhaps it was because there was comfort to draw from friends who were in the same situation.

This, though, wasn't a mission's end.

Three days, four hours and twenty-one minutes late.

It was nothing but a rendezvous point, mid-mission, so they could decide their next moves.

Sakura breathed in, breathed out, and promised herself that she wouldn't stay past three days, four hours and thirty minutes.

She couldn't afford to place the mission in further jeopardy and, in continuing, at this rate-it might be the only way to find Kakashi.

(Her heart squeezed tight at the thought.)

Three days, four hours and twenty-four minutes late.

Sakura waited and waited and waited.

Then her minutes ticked to three days, four hours and thirty minutes and she could no longer afford to wait.

She drifted through the woods on silent feet, with an empty heart, her cloak billowing around her (still a cloak for her, not a shroud).

Fireflies danced through the air around her, as if announcing her, like they were death's heralds and she was death itself, to any who might be foolish enough to cross her.

Or perhaps, she thought, that was just her mood.


	9. 2012: Day 9: Tick Tock

Title: Tick Tock  
>Author: Killaurey<br>Word Count: 163  
>Rating: T<p>

Written for Day 9 of the Last Fan Standing Challenge on KakaSaku's Dreamwidth community.

**Prompt: WTF**

* * *

><p>Tick. Tock. Tick. Tock.<p>

In a little house, long abandoned, there's movement one night.

The next morning, on the window that faces the dawn, there's three letters and one word drawn in the filth.

_WTF_ and _help_

And under that is a smeared handprint, bloody and grimy.

Tick.

The floor is grey with disuse, decay, dust.

Kakashi's hair looks luminescent against it.

The pool of blood that spreads from him in a wash of sticky scarlet all but glows.

Tock.

Tick.

Sakura's knees are wet with warm liquid—it's red—and she struggles to rise. This has got to be a genjutsu—it can't be anything else, except it's not ending and he's not breathing and her knees are warm in something they shouldn't be touching and are.

She wants to scream but can't find the words.

They've been stolen.

Tock.

In the depths of the house something _moves_.

Tick.

A high scream.

A heavy thump.

And another spill of blood.

… Tock.


	10. 2012: Day 10: Puzzling

Title: Puzzling  
>Author: Killaurey<br>Word Count: 465  
>Rating: T<p>

Written for Day 10 of the Last Fan Standing Challenge on KakaSaku's Dreamwidth community.

**Prompt: Music Box  
><strong>

* * *

><p>Sakura has never played a video game in her life but she's watched Naruto play them enough to recognize a puzzle setting when she sees one.<p>

Kakashi, she thinks, as he brushes past the black marble plinth, topped with a pillar that has writing on it and then past the boxes made of stone that stick up from the ground towards the closed door on the other end of the room, has never even seen a video game played.

She eyes his back for a moment and then shrugs. He can try to get the door open his way. She'll try it her way.

One of them has to get it open in any case.

The pillar reads:

_Do – Re – Mi – Fa – Sol – La – Si_

That's all.

Sakura glances at the stone boxes and counts them in a look. Yes, there's seven of them.

_What would Naruto do?_ she thinks and ignores the part of her that says he'd be trying to pound the door open with some version of Rasengan. _If this was a video game and Naruto was playing, what would he do?_

That's easy enough to answer.

She steps around the plinth and towards the closest stone block. Sakura steels herself and then touches the cool stone. It lights up—bright blue—as it chimes. _Do_.

"Sakura?" Kakashi sounds confused.

"I'm getting us through this," she says, "stop playing with the door. If you warp it we might not be able to get out even if I do solve this."

Sakura gauges the rest of the stones and, for lack of a more obvious choice, she picks the next on the right and touches it.

The first stone goes blank and she knows she's picked the wrong second one. Rolling her eyes, she smacks the first one again—it's chime is no less bright for having to be repeated—and goes left.

She goes through this routine three more times before finding the second stone in the sequence. (_Re_.)

The third one, _Mi_, she finds by luck.

Her next touch sends all three of them blank again. Sakura grits her teeth and restarts.

It takes her another few tries to get them all lit up and when she does, it's ridiculous how accomplished she feels as the door creaks open.

Kakashi's looking at her with one eyebrow raised.

"What?" she asks.

"I didn't know you played games," he says.

"I don't," she says shortly then realizes… "Hey! If you knew what I was doing then you could've _helped_, you know!"

He shrugs. "You could have asked."

She aims a kick at his ankle (he dodges) and as the door falls shut behind them she can hear the music notes chiming backwards, presumably, to reset themselves.

_Si – La – Sol – Fa – Mi – Re – Do_

* * *

><p><em><em>

**ETA: **Because anon didn't bother to leave any other way for me to answer them: two seconds on wikipedia would show you that it can be either 'ti' or 'si'. I went with 'si' because that's what _I'm_ used to, so deal with it.


	11. 2012: Day 11: After The End

Title: After The End  
>Author: Killaurey<br>Word Count: 499  
>Rating: T<p>

Written for Day 11 of the Last Fan Standing Challenge on KakaSaku's Dreamwidth community.

**Prompt: The Bright Side**

* * *

><p>Dying hurts.<p>

Like a starburst of white-hot pain and agony tripled, quadrupled, like her blood is boiling and then erupting through her body.

Sakura floats away in the wash of a world of hurt.

When she opens her eyes again, things are different.

* * *

><p>She stands amongst black-clad people who all are solemn.<p>

It's her funeral.

Sakura watches, head cocked, remembering that funerals are horrible things. She's supposed to feel sad that they're sad and can't.

Sorrow is out of her reach. Instead, her thoughts are wrapped in the fuzziest, softest, warmest blanket ever and all that she feels, while surrounded by grieving people, is a quiet but giddy sense of freedom.

She's _okay_.

It's hard to remember why these people-who love her-are so sad in the face of that emotion. Her side is the brighter one.

After the funeral is over and Sakura stands alone, it's only then that she wonders why she's here. Isn't she supposed to move on?

The idea, like her precious peoples' sorrow, seems important and inconsequential at the same time.

Sakura shifts uneasily. As she does so, someone else shifts with the slither-soft scrape of fabric on fabric and she realizes she's not alone.

She turns and finds Kakashi leaning against a tree.

He doesn't see her, not even when she drifts over (walking is for those who are alive) and waves her hand in front of his face.

When she studies him, she thinks she's got the first idea of why she's still around.

It feels important.

At the same time, it doesn't matter. She's happy, why shouldn't he be?

Sakura shakes her head (once that question would have been easy to answer) and leans against the tree, as she waits for him to do something that's more exciting than look at her grave.

It takes him, in her confused opinion, a very long time to leave.

She wonders why.

* * *

><p>Over the next few weeks, Sakura learns how to most efficiently trail Kakashi.<p>

He likes to disappear in clouds of smoke and leaves and she's got no way to follow him when he does that.

With practice she learns how to predict where he's going to be.

He never gives any indication of noticing her.

Sakura isn't sure why she's following him.

It's better, she supposes, than being bored.

* * *

><p>The first time she figures out how to communicate with Kakashi, not that he knows it, they're in a supermarket and he's picking up a few things.<p>

Sakura leans over his shoulder, her see-through hands on his back, while he's slouching through the frozen products aisle, and says, "You should try the pistachio mint ice cream."

To her surprise he stops mid-step, glances where she's pointed, and winds up buying a container of the ice cream.

As they leave the supermarket, he looks down at his bags and mutters in a baffled tone something about not even _liking _ice cream.

Sakura smiles and thinks how to use this development.


	12. 2012: Day 12: Grudge

Title: Grudge  
>Author: Killaurey<br>Word Count: 397  
>Rating: T<p>

Written for Day 12 of the Last Fan Standing Challenge on KakaSaku's Dreamwidth community.

**Prompt: Drunken Bastard**

* * *

><p>Sakura presses her hand to a flat metal plate in the middle of a nondescript wall. The plate is one of many others-the wall is covered with them, like every other wall in the city-until it begins to glow a pale, sickly green.<p>

"Password?" The voice, an empty monotone, comes from the wall.

"Drunken bastard," Sakura says flatly.

The plate's light dies and a door two feet to the left of her slides open silently. Sakura hurries through it, before anyone can see her, and the door closes behind her. The locks engage with heavy snicks and clanks that she knows from experience cannot be heard on the outside.

She makes her way down dimly lit but familiar stairs. They shouldn't be familiar, she thinks, as she always does, but there's nothing she can do about it.

It wasn't her who made them a necessity in her life. It was him.

Down the stairs, enough of them to make her lose count no matter how many times she tries to keep track (if she still had her human body, she'd be exhausted from just going down), Sakura comes to a room with seventeen tanks filled with blue-green liquid. Each of the tanks stands several feet taller than she does and if she tried to reach around one, in a parody of a hug, her hands would not touch.

Each of the tanks is labeled.

One label reads _Ino_. Another reads _Naruto_.

She pauses by each of them. Apologies stick in her throat, like they always do and she carries on.

The last tank is labeled _Kakashi_.

"This is your fault," she tells him, because talking to him is easier than talking to the rest. Every word she spoke was the truth and anger was simpler than survivor's guilt. "I'm working on fixing it."

He never answers. None of them do.

Her laugh is brittle. "I haven't decided," she continues, "if I'll bring you back. Them, yes. All of them. But you… it haunts me, what you did. It's been two hundred years, Kakashi, and Konoha is gone."

The silence is dreadfully loud. Her voice seems shocking, even to her own ears.

"That's your fault," she says. "Even if I manage to bring people back… that's still your fault." Her eyes burn with the same sickly green light that the plate had glowed. "I remember that."


	13. 2012: Day 13: After The End II

Title: After The End II  
>Author: Killaurey<br>Word Count: 503  
>Rating: T<br>Notes: Continuation of Day 11.

Written for Day 13 of the Last Fan Standing Challenge on KakaSaku's Dreamwidth community.

**Prompt: Last Goodbye**

* * *

><p>It amuses her, for a few days, to come up with things that she likes and that Kakashi might not and then suggest them to him as something to do, or buy, or read.<p>

Sakura wonders what he thinks of it all.

While he frowns at a volume about microbiology, Sakura tries to decide if he thinks about her sometimes. She suggested the book to him but despite that, as he hesitates, Sakura waits, just watching him. Sometimes when she suggests something he does it right away. Sometimes, he takes his time.

Her private theory is that the ones that aren't his style trip him up. It seems makes sense to her that's why she suggested this book. He wouldn't read it.

He stands by it, hand brushing the spine.

After an achingly long fifteen minutes of deliberation, while she resists the urge to influence him one way or the other, he buys it.

Sakura isn't sure why.

* * *

><p>It comes as a rude shock the first time he gets a mission. She follows him all through the briefing, all through the gearing up, through the initial meet up with his temporary team and as they leave the village, she's prepared to go with him.<p>

But she discovers that she can't get past the walls of the village. It burns when she touches them.

Kakashi pauses for a long moment, like he's heard her swearing, but then runs on with a shake of his head. She's left to feel oddly bereft as they're forced into a more final goodbye than she's gotten used to. (Every night she wishes him goodbye when he goes to bed. The part of her that remembers being alive thinks she says that wrong but she can't remember what the proper words were. )

Will he make it back? Or will this be a last goodbye? She murmurs it just in case.

(Would he become what she is if he died?)

She stares down the road he takes until he's out of sight and then carefully presses her hands against the barrier. Her eyes can't see it. It flexes slightly under her hands, like a thick membrane more than a wall, and it doesn't hurt this time. Sakura tries to push through it and _then _it hurts and she recoils.

Hours later, when she's tested the wall thoroughly and found that it goes all the way around Konoha, Sakura contemplates her findings. Intent matters. If she just touches the barrier accidentally, it's okay. But if she tries to go through it deliberately…

She didn't die in Konoha. Therefore, she thinks, she shouldn't have to stay in Konoha. Sakura tilts her head back and studies the sky. Would it hurt if she went up…?

"I wouldn't try that," a girl says, "you'll crash into the wall about two hundred feet up."

"Ouch," adds a boy ruefully.

Sakura spins to face them. The boy is missing an eye. The girl's hair is darker than hers.

They're as translucent as she is.


	14. 2012: Day 14: Lick It

Title: Lick It  
>Author: Killaurey<br>Word Count: 296  
>Rating: T<p>

Written for Day 14 of the Last Fan Standing Challenge on KakaSaku's Dreamwidth community.

**Prompt: Lick**

* * *

><p>Sakura drapes herself around Kakashi's shoulders and presses a quick kiss to the side of his head. "Hi," she says.<p>

He pauses in his reading. "Hi," he says, then adds, "is there any reason why you smell like a candy cane?"

"It's my new perfume," she tells him. "For, you know, holidays and stuff. I wouldn't wear it all the time." Sakura leans a little more heavily on him just because she can.

He reaches out, still quicker than her after all this time, and hooks his arm around her waist and pulls her into his lap. He returns the kiss to the side of _her _head and takes a deep breath.

"What do you think?" she asks.

"It's very… peppermint," he allows. "And sweet."

Sakura deliberates asking him flat out if he likes it or not and then, because she's in a good mood and doesn't feel like being grumpy if he doesn't. And it _is_both sweet and very peppermint. So rather than ask a dangerous question she asks one where the real answer amuses her and that she doesn't think he'll guess it.

"Guess what it's called?"

He tilts his head, like he isn't sure how much he wants to humour her, but then offers several suggestions, all of them having to do with peppermint and the holidays.

Sakura shakes her head no to each of his guesses.

"Okay," he says, his voice amused. "What is it called?"

"Lick It," she says.

"It's _edible_?" Now he sounds intrigued.

Sakura laughs. "No! That's just what it's called."

He considers that, she can tell from his silence. "It does sound like a pretty good suggestion though," he muses.

She raises one eyebrow. "Oh?"

"Licking you," he says. "And we can see how edible it is."

* * *

><p>This was written totally because once upon a time I owned a perfume that smells like what Sakura is wearing and it really was called 'Lick It'.<p> 


	15. 2012: Day 15: Stuck In Place

Title: Stuck In Place  
>Author: Killaurey<br>Word Count: 461  
>Rating: T<p>

Written for Day 15 of the Last Fan Standing Challenge on KakaSaku's Dreamwidth community.

**Prompt: Creep**

* * *

><p>"You know," Ino says with all the subtlety of a brick, "it's pretty tiresome watching you just brood."<p>

Sakura glances at Ino and then away. Her friend is all loud colours and equally loud defiance in the face of no news. Ino's smile is sharp-edged and her temper has been shorter than usual, but she's still been laughing.

Sakura hasn't been. She doesn't see the point in it.

(Sakura knows better than to say that to Ino, who will only scoff and scorn her for being weak.)

"Then go watch someone else," Sakura says flatly. "I'm not here to keep you entertained."

Ino shrugs languidly. "I don't want to watch anyone else," her best friend, always rival says. "Not when all the people I prefer watching are, oh right, just like _your _people, are missing."

Three months. Even for him that's later than usual. When it's not just him who has been gone that long… hope seems hopeless.

Sakura purses her lips tightly for a moment and reminds herself that Ino is in the same boat as she is. They're both missing their most important people. "Then why are you complaining about the fact that I brood? I think I've got reason enough."

"Never said you don't have reason," Ino says while toying with a stand of long blonde hair. Her eyes burn like acid.

Sakura resists the urge to look away. "Your point, then?"

"What if they're _not _coming back?" Ino says and there's something low and ugly and broken in her voice for a moment before the steel-in-ice tone comes back. "It's been three months. Are you just going to give up on living?"

Sakura looks down for a second and then forces herself to meet Ino's eyes. "Of course not," she says mechanically. "I haven't. I'm doing my job and I'm talking to you and I'm keeping up with my soaps."

Ino's lips twitch slightly. It might be a smile but it's gone too quickly for Sakura to really tell. "Measure of sanity," Ino says dryly. "Keeping up with your trashy TV addictions."

Sakura just shrugs.

"Look," Ino says, "you need to start laughing again."

"I don't feel like laughing."

"I know-you think I do? But if… if they don't come back," and three months missing might as well mean they weren't coming back, Sakura knows that even as Ino leaves it unspoken, "then we've got to keep moving forward. So I laugh even if I don't find things funny."

"I can't do that," Sakura says. "Not like that. I need to know first, Ino."

"There's no guarantee that you'll ever know."

Sakura's lips twist. "I know that too."

"That's creeping through each day like a shadow. That's _crap_. That's not living, Sakura."

"It's not dying either."


	16. 2012: Day 16: In Fragile Hands

Title: In Fragile Hands  
>Author: Killaurey<br>Word Count: 500  
>Rating: T<p>

Written for Day 16 of the Last Fan Standing Challenge on KakaSaku's Dreamwidth community.

**Prompt: Some Kind of Wonderful**

* * *

><p>"Do you think he'll ever wake up?" Sakura asks, resting her fingertips against the cool glass and looking into the room. "I mean, he's awake but not-" She shakes her head and looks at Ino. "This is your field more than mine, Pig."<p>

Ino leans against the glass. She looks at ease, comfortable.

Sakura would hate her if she didn't know that just because Ino looks it doesn't mean she feels it.

"That's up to him," Ino says. "We've done what we can but… they have to want to come back. They have to ask."

Sakura nods. Her gaze drops, brushing the top of her slightly rounded belly. (How long will it be, she wonders absently, before she cannot see her feet?)

Her gaze returns to the one-way glass and the man on the other side of it. "Wake up," she says, as Ino pretends to not hear her. "There's some kind of wonderful you're missing right now, Kakashi. Please." Her voice is soft. "Wake up."

* * *

><p>The room is very plain. There are yellow curtains adorning a small window set high in the wall. His blankets are a tangled morass of blues and greens. The bed is a sturdy, utilitarian thing. A chair sits in one corner, hard-backed and stern looking without a cushion to soften it. There's nothing else.<p>

This, he thinks, is some kind of wonderful. It's very peaceful here. Soothing. He thinks the afterlife, the kind, gentle version, would be something like this.

He knows that distresses the blonde girl with eyes the colour of the sky and so when she visits him, and she does so daily, he is never sure what to tell her. She's a doctor and there's something wrong with his mind. That much he knows.

But how can anything be wrong when everything feels so right?

The fact that he cannot remember his name or anything else doesn't trouble him. The blonde doctor will tell him when he asks. (She always does.)

Every morning he wakes up in the same room and knows he is safe and comfortable.

What could be better?

There's an answer to that question, he thinks sometimes, hidden in the things the doctor tells him.

He doesn't ask.

She never says. (He has to _want _to know. If he asks, he gets answers.)

And his some kind of wonderful never shatters.

* * *

><p>Ino keeps every picture Sakura sends her. A steady march of time through Sakura's pregnancy, then a tiny baby in Sakura's arms, and then a little girl with her father's serious face.<p>

Something wonderful.

She could shatter him, the man who doesn't know who he is, with these pictures. She could say, 'this is your wife, Sakura', and 'this is your daughter, Kaede', and 'they want you to come home'.

He doesn't want to know.

And wonderful means different things to different people.

Ino holds her silence. She cannot bring herself to break them. They're already too fragile.

That she's breaking herself is understood.


	17. 2012: Day 17: Fatal Flaw

Title: Fatal Flaw  
>Author: Killaurey<br>Word Count: 308  
>Rating: T<p>

Written for Day 17 of the Last Fan Standing Challenge on KakaSaku's Dreamwidth community.

**Prompt: Hypnotize**

* * *

><p>The problem with curse seals is that they prey on your faults.<p>

Sakura is well aware that she has many flaws.

(She is not all flaws. But she has many. Like most people she knows.)

She can feel the curse seal eating through her defenses, crawling up through lines of thinking, self-defeating and harmful patterns that she's worked to control (Subdue, repress.) Each breath she draws now is another shuddery victory. Each blink of her eyes sends the world around her crashing and rearranging itself like a kaleidoscopic disaster.

Hypnotizes. The colours bleed into one another in dizzying swirls and patches. She staggers to her feet.

There's a battle going around her but it doesn't matter. (Nothing matters.)

The seal eats like acid through her barriers and she knows she's unbearably compromised. She doesn't pretend to have the strength to fight it off, not for real, not for certain, not to herself though if a friend was standing by her she might pretend.

(Is that a flaw or a virtue?)

The battle is bright patches of red against swirls of black and white and browns. She can hear shouting but it's distant over the cacophony that drills through her ears. A splash of purple tugs at her arm and Sakura has the impression that the sky is looking at her (with long fingers gripping her arm hard enough to leave bruises) before the battle rages and the purple disappears.

She finds herself after a while (seconds? hours? days?) staring up into a single eye that swirls black and red and white, like the battle and yet calmer.

"Sleep." His voice is dark and commanding and a blessing.

She tumbles down into the depths of rest and lets the swirling stop.

The acid, however, keeps moving.

When (if) she wakes up, she doubts it will be her who does.


	18. 2012: Day 18: Private Project

Title: Private Project  
>Author: Killaurey<br>Word Count: 500  
>Rating: T<p>

Written for Day 18 of the Last Fan Standing Challenge on KakaSaku's Dreamwidth community.

**Prompt: Impact**

* * *

><p>There's days when Sakura wonders why she's friends with Ino.<p>

Then there's days where she _really _wonders why.

"No," Sakura says, leaning back in her chair. They're in her tiny office at the hospital and despite the negative response Ino's bright eyes and smile don't fade at all.

Sakura ignores the part of herself that points out that Ino's reaction is as it is because when has she ever managed to make a no stick when it comes to Ino?

"But it'll be fun," Ino says earnestly. "And it will help improve public perception of shinobi and you know that we need that after the latest string of failures."

That's a valid point. Sakura eyes the sheaf of papers that Ino dropped on her desk like they're a viper despite that. "I'm no actress," she says. "You ought to do it. You're the best at that sort of thing."

"But it'll make more of an impact if we're a team," Ino wheedles. "The Hokage's apprentice and the daughter of one of the oldest clans? I mean, Hinata's clan is older but- well, Hyuuga dignity."

"And you have no dignity," Sakura jibes, because she can't ignore an opening like that.

"I'm ignoring that," Ino says loftily. "Though if you're insulting me it means you can't think of a better argument which is pretty low, Forehead."

"Shut it, Pig." Sakura scowls at the papers. "What if I don't _want _to be in a movie?"

Ino tilts her head. "I guess," she says dubiously. "If you want to turn down money, admiration and fame."

"Not even _you_ would do it just for _that_," Sakura accuses. "Don't play the idiot with me. What's the real scoop?"

Ino's smile is razor-sharp. It's no less brilliant than what Sakura calls the idiot-smile but it's a lot more edged. Dangerous. Sakura prefers it because it's real even if it isn't as comfortable. "Just keeping in practice," Ino says easily and leans over to leaf through the papers before pulling out a few of them. "These."

Sakura reads them. They're all about the director. "Okay…?"

"He's had ten leading ladies in the last year for different projects," Ino says. "Four out of ten are married. The other six were single."

Sakura's eyes narrow. "Were?"

"They're dead now," Ino says. "In different circumstances, at different times, all of them after the movie was done filming. He's had alibis for them all. But-he's the common link."

"We're both single," Sakura observes. "That'd have quite the impact on him, wouldn't it? Two for one."

Ino hums. "And then we turn the tables on him. You in?"

Sakura still doesn't want to be in the movie. It sounds horrible.

But…

"Tsunade-shishou-?"

"Already have her permission."

Sakura nods. "I'm in."

* * *

><p><em>Three Months Later<em>

"Sakura?" It's Kakashi and he sounds baffled.

She glances up from her book. "Yeees?"

"Why are you and Ino on the poster for a movie called _Sugar-Spun Heart-Attack_?"

"Oh," Sakura says nonchalantly, hiding a grin. "Private project."


	19. 2012: Day 19 & 20: Ordinary Morning

Title: Ordinary Morning  
>Author: Killaurey<br>Word Count: 600  
>Rating: T<p>

Written for Day 19 AND 20 of the Last Fan Standing Challenge on KakaSaku's Dreamwidth community. (The days were combined due to a decision on the mod's part.)

**Prompt: Tortoise Shell  
><strong>

* * *

><p>Sakura wakes up to the sounds of Ino and Naruto bickering.<p>

Like always.

She rolls her eyes, turns over, and stuffs her head under her pillow. Her blankets, as she curls up, bunch up around her like a tortoise's shell, though it doesn't protect her nearly as much as a real shell would.

(Would a real shell muffle noise? She's not sure and it's such a stupid, early morning thought that she snorts.)

"—it goes _this_ way, you idiot—"

"I can't see what you're doing when you hold it like that—"

The three of them getting an apartment together had looked great on paper (though it had nearly given both her parents and Ino's a conniption fit) but Sakura had reckoned without the fact that both of the blonds in her life were chatty, opinionated, and earlier risers than she was.

"Oh my god, what are you doing?"

"…Seasoning?"

And then a crash, which strikes her as somewhat ominous.

Sakura contemplates shrieking for them to shut up (they're cooking breakfast, she thinks, from the conversation, and she wonders if she should be worried about them blowing the place up; Ino isn't a bad cook but Naruto is _inventive_ in his screw ups) when a knock on her window catches her attention.

She peeks out from under her blankets and pillow and spots Kakashi outside her window. Her hand waves (she wriggles it out from the shell she's made enough for that) and he gets the window open without setting off any of the traps on it.

Well, he's done it before, so that's not surprising.

"You look ridiculous," he tells her.

Both of them ignore the crash from the kitchen, which is accompanied by Ino getting a little shriller and Naruto swearing.

"It's either this," she says, "or go and murder them."

Sakura is almost certain that they'd deserve it right about now, though it's hard to remember why as Kakashi sits down on the edge of her bed.

"It'd be hard to hide the bodies," Kakashi says. "And your neighbours would notice the sound decrease almost immediately. Pretty suspicious, that."

"They'd be glad," she insists, wondering if there was a way for her to get her hair brush and some clothing other than the oversized t-shirt she wore to sleep on without him saying anything. Sakura doubted it. "Can you pass me my hair brush?"

He does and she wriggles around to sit up, blankets still wrapped tight around her body, her hair a tangled mess. His eye crinkles with laughter as he looks at her.

"Don't say anything," she warns him. "You're the one that shows up here before I'm good and ready to face the day. So you can just deal."

Which doesn't stop her from hurrying to brush her hair out. It's one thing for him to see her looking like a slob. It's another for her to stay that way for too long. They chat idly as she gets ready for the day, Kakashi fetching her clothing when she orders him to, though he does it with snide comments that she snaps back at him for.

(Sakura is just glad she showers at night these days. It makes mornings simpler.)

She's just pulling on her sandals when there's a third crash and a genuine cry of pain.

"I'll go," Kakashi says, standing. "You finish getting ready."

"And have them wonder what you're doing coming from my bedroom?" she asks.

Kakashi's grinning behind his mask. She can just tell. "Let them wonder."

Sakura rolls her eyes.

But, really, it's just an ordinary morning.


	20. 2012: Day 21: Kunoichi SO Exam

Title: Kunoichi Significant Other Exam #1  
>Author: Killaurey<br>Word Count: 378  
>Rating: T<p>

Written for Day 21 of the Last Fan Standing Challenge on KakaSaku's Dreamwidth community.

**Prompt: Last line must be either Kakashi or Sakura (or both) saying 'That's what s/he said.'**

* * *

><p>Genma, Kakashi was rapidly deciding, was a fiendish hell beast.<p>

"Let me get this straight," Genma says, his eyes bright with amusement and the senbon in his mouth tilted at what could only be an evil angle. Well, perhaps not evil, Kakashi concedes that _might_ be going too far, but it's definitely set at an aggravating angle of rakish glee at Kakashi's expense.

(And who chews on a weapon all the time anyway? Honestly.)

"Go ahead," Kakashi intones, because despite the fact that he's contemplating ways to set Genma's senbon on fire, he's not really in a hurry to actually get his assigned… task… over with. He eyes the frilly pink and purple and blue aisle, which smells a little funny (he supposes that those who don't have his nose wouldn't be as aware of the competitions of scents going on in the aisle as he is), and which is considered by every man ever to be the ultimate No Man's Land.

From the way the few girls browsing the products are shooting glances at him and Genma and then giggling Kakashi is pretty sure they know why he's here.

He wonders if this is a standard test that kunoichi give their significant others.

"—and are you even listening to me?" Genma asks, a smirk in his voice, and on his face, when Kakashi looks at him.

"No," Kakashi says honestly and vindictively enjoys the way that makes Genma squawk with indignation.

"I was asking a question," Genma says.

"You're having fun at my expense," Kakashi corrects. "Don't even deny it."

Genma just shrugs, like the smug bastard he is. "Seriously, though, you have to buy—"

"Feminine hygiene products," Kakashi supplies, if only because it's the phrase that makes him cringe the least.

"—right, and if you don't, Sakura has threatened to eviscerate you and then shove you out a window."

"Defenestrate's the proper term." Kakashi eyes the aisle and sighs heavily. "That is, however, the mission in a nutshell."

"Harsh."

Kakashi weighs the odds of Sakura actually murdering him and decides they're definitely not skewed in favour of his survival if he doesn't do this. "I don't really have a choice." This or… death. Not many options, no. "At least… that's what she said."


	21. 2012: Day 22: Locked Down

Title: Locked Down  
>Author: Killaurey<br>Word Count: 500  
>Rating: T<p>

Written for Day 22 of the Last Fan Standing Challenge on KakaSaku's Dreamwidth community.

**Prompt: Jelly Belly**

* * *

><p>Breaking into a friend's house in most cases probably meant that, really, you weren't that great of a friend at all because that seemed like the sort of thing that friends just… didn't do.<p>

Ino figured that this was a special case and she was a special friend as she picked her way through Sakura's jutsu traps, taking a moment to admire the way they interlocked in deviously devilish patterns.

(That, and knocking down the door would only have succeeded in knocking herself out. Naruto had found that out yesterday. Ino was not above learning from his mistakes.)

Sweat beaded down her spine as she focused her chakra on unraveling the jutsu traps enough for her to slip in through the window.

The only reason she wasn't having an even harder time, Ino thought, was because Sakura was still far more honest than she was. It meant, due to that subconscious bias, Sakura's wards had exploitable weaknesses when it came to people whose chakra they recognized.

It just took a little… finesse… to use that against them. Ino flexed her hands, bit her lip, and continued her work.

Two hours later, she was in.

The apartment was silent and dark. Ino shut the window behind her and left the bedroom.

She found Sakura sitting on a low couch, curled up in a blanket. The only illumination in the room came from the small lamp that sat on the coffee table beside her.

Ino glanced at the floor and raised her eyebrows. To speak or not to speak…

She looked at Sakura, who gave no indication of having noticed her, though Ino knew she had, and shrugged. "Do I want to know why there's Jelly Bellies all over the floor, Forehead?"

"I threw them there." Sakura's voice was rough, like she'd been screaming until she was hoarse.

"What a waste of perfectly good candy," Ino said, draping herself over the back of the couch. Sakura made no move to stop her and, indeed, shifted over slightly for Ino to join Sakura on the couch proper. Ino slid down and wrapped an arm around Sakura.

"I don't even like them," Sakura said. "I only had them because…"

"Kakashi likes them."

"Liked," Sakura said, closing her eyes.

"You're wrong," Ino said, keeping her voice gentle. Sakura stiffened. "He does still like them."

"He's dead."

"He's not," Ino corrected. "It was a jutsu designed to make him scan as dead to all medical jutsu. They had to call my dad in to break it but he's awake now."

Sakura looked at her, green eyes suspicious. "There's no such jutsu."

Ino raised one eyebrow. "You could always go confirm that Kakashi is at the hospital and awake." A pause. "Locking yourself away means you're behind on the news."

"He's dead," Sakura repeated as hope grew in her eyes.

"Let's get you cleaned up," Ino said, smoothing a bit of hair back from Sakura's face. "Then we'll go and see."

"Do you promise he's not?"

"Promise."


	22. 2012: Day 23: Gifts

Title: Gifts  
>Author: Killaurey<br>Word Count: 500  
>Rating: T<p>

Written for Day 23 of the Last Fan Standing Challenge on KakaSaku's Dreamwidth community.

**Prompt: Purple Unicorn**

* * *

><p>On Monday, Sakura finds a present on her front step she raises an eyebrow, picks it up, and opens it the moment she's in her tiny kitchen.<p>

It's a miniature bunch of lollipops, wrapped in bright colours.

She studies the note-it just says 'from Kakashi'-and tries to figure out what he means by giving her candy.

Sakura sighs, unwraps one, and sticks it in her mouth.

* * *

><p>By the next Monday, she's getting tired of lollipops. Every day she's found another package of them on her doorstep from Kakashi.<p>

They sit, in a candy bowl, on her coffee table.

She knows what people usually give candy for but Sakura's pretty sure that, if that was the case, that he'd have acted a little differently whenever she runs across him in town.

And he hasn't.

Which leaves her with a mystery.

The next morning as she leaves for work, she sticks a note on her door telling Kakashi that, really, she's got enough lollipops for the next century and if he's going to give her things could he please find something else?

* * *

><p>Tuesday passes without a present, which she expects, since if he'd gone to her door with lollipops and found her note then obviously he wouldn't have anything to give her.<p>

It's Wednesday that gives her the jitters when she gets home and finds a package on her step.

Once inside, she heads straight for her couch. She gives the bowl of lollipops a long look-hopefully this isn't more of _them_-and opens the package.

It's full of confetti and wispy white fluff that clings to her hands. At the bottom of the mess she finds a tiny purple unicorn.

With wings.

And sparkles in it's long lavender hair.

Sakura stares at it, balanced on her palm, and looks at the mess his wrapping has made of her lap (and her couch and her floor) and just starts laughing.

She can't tell if he's courting her or not.

Somehow, that uncertainty doesn't bother her.

* * *

><p>Sakura lets what she's taken to calling the purple unicorn invasion go on for two weeks and four days.<p>

Mostly, she admits to herself, because she's curious to see how _many _different purple unicorns he can find for her. No two of them are the same. Variations in colour, poses, material.

They've taken over the mantel and she's going to have to find some place else to keep them and that's what she's mulling over one night, two weeks and five days into the purple unicorn invasion, when she runs right into Kakashi outside her door.

After spluttering a sorry she realizes that he's just been setting her daily present out and that it's right there on the mat.

He looks awkward.

Her lips twitch.

He looks even _more _awkward.

"How about a cease-fire," she says, "and you can come help me eat lollipops."

He nods.

She does, however, make sure to pick up her latest unicorn before following him inside.


	23. 2012: Day 24: Beats For You

Title: Beats For You  
>Author: Killaurey<br>Word Count: 500  
>Rating: T<p>

Written for Day 24 of the Last Fan Standing Challenge on KakaSaku's Dreamwidth community.

**Prompt: Make Me Your Radio (lyric from Stereo Hearts by Gym Class Heroes)**

Note: All notes from the mystery-leaver are also lyrics from the above-mentioned song. This will probably become a full-fledged fic at some point because it is so not finished as this excerpt stands.

* * *

><p>It starts with a note.<p>

Sakura finds it scribbled on lined paper in red crayon, tucked under her potted plant that sits on the front landing of her tiny little house. The entirety of the note is one phrase, all done in unfamiliar, lower case, grade-school writing.

_make me your radio_

Sakura frowns at the note and tucks it in her pocket to forget about.

It's probably just a prank.

* * *

><p>A week later, Kakashi goes missing.<p>

He hadn't been on a mission. He'd been _in _the village.

Tsunade sends her home when, at the news, she becomes too distracted to work.

Sakura finds another note on another piece of lined paper, this time in blue crayon. The childish writing is the same.

It reads:

_and turn me up when you feel low_

She frowns thoughtfully.

This time, rather than tuck the note away, she dashes a quick question on the other side of the paper and tucks it back under the potted plant.

_Who are you? _her note reads and she takes special pains to make sure her writing is perfect in every way, just to contrast the differences between herself and the mystery-writer.

Whether that lesson will be taken to heart, because it _is _a warning and her temper is short-drawn due to worry, she doesn't know.

* * *

><p>The next day, she takes off. Tsunade understands though she reminds Sakura that she's not allowed to go looking for Kakashi. There are ANBU teams doing that and Sakura knows the protocol for shinobi and their loved ones during situations like this.<p>

Sakura nods and quietly just says she needs the day to herself. She doesn't plan to leave her house.

Which is true. She rubs at her eyes-having been up all night to keep watch on the potted plant-and goes to get coffee.

She doesn't know if this mystery has anything to do with Kakashi's disappearance.

It might not.

So she'll wait and see. With coffee in hand, she resumes her watch, carefully hidden, and settles in for a long day. Her chakra is suppressed and has been all night. Hopefully her note-leaver will think she's at work.

Most stake-outs aren't very interesting. This one gives her to think about to keep from gnawing on her liver with frustration and worry over Kakashi, though, and she'll take that.

At least this way she's doing something.

The day passes slowly. Nothing happens with the plant and no one comes near her door.

Not even the mailman with a bill.

* * *

><p>As the sun sets, Sakura stretches and heads for the door.<p>

She kneels down, lifts the potted plant, and freezes.

There's two notes now.

One is yesterday's, with her question written on the other side.

But the other… the other is new.

Suddenly alert, she rethinks her day, and tries to remember if she'd missed anything. She doesn't think she did.

Her fingers tremble slightly as she unfolds the note and reads:

_this melody was meant for you_


	24. 2012: Day 25: Fallen

Title: Fallen  
>Author: Killaurey<br>Word Count: 100  
>Rating: T<p>

Written for Day 25 of the Last Fan Standing Challenge on KakaSaku's Dreamwidth community.

**Prompt: ****"Come and get me!" **The **last line** in MUST be this quote - and it MUST be** Kakashi **saying it. The only thing you may change is the exclamation point at the end.

* * *

><p>Konoha fell in the span of one night.<p>

Out of nowhere came the enemy-faceless, formless, untouchable… The village had no defense.

There was no way to save the civilians. The enemy was too deadly and three hours into the attack their Hokage, beautiful Tsunade with newly grief-stricken eyes, gave the order:

All shinobi were to withdraw. Leave the rest behind.

Many shinobi refused point-blank. _Leave?_ Death took them and their families. (Sakura _gone_.)

Others served willingly as bait to give other shinobi time to escape.

Kakashi's grin was razor-sharp while he spoke his final challenge:

"Come and get me."


	25. 2012: Day 26: Breathe Darkly

Title: Breathe Darkly  
>Author: Killaurey<br>Word Count: 500  
>Rating: T<br>**Warnings: Suicidal Thoughts & Assisted Suicide**

Written for Day 26 of the Last Fan Standing Challenge on KakaSaku's Dreamwidth community.

**Prompt: Killing Me Softly**

* * *

><p>Sakura knows hundreds of ways to kill herself. She stares up at the ceiling and tries to decide which method she'd use today if she had access to her chakra.<p>

Kakashi sits on one side of her bed and Naruto on the other. Them, she ignores.

It's not a disease, though it acts like the later stages of one. It's a new poison, they think, paired with an equally new jutsu. Incurable.

She can't sit up on her own. She can't breathe on her own. Her chakra pathways have collapsed. Her wrists are restrained so that she doesn't try to kill herself. (Again.)

Sakura is dying, slowly and painstakingly.

She wishes someone would just pay attention to what _she_wants instead of chaining her to life and waiting, waiting for her to leave naturally.

How natural can it be when she's hooked up to machines that force her to breathe, that feed her nutrients, that monitor her every second?

Normally the rage, the anger, at this thought would be worse. Kakashi and Naruto are two of the worst. She loves them for loving her, she _does_, but she wants to _go_.

Normally she would glower. (That only upsets them though, like she's the one who has done something wrong in wanting this over with.)

Normally isn't today.

Two nights ago, after weeks of struggling to write with uncooperative hands she managed to get a letter off to Ino.

They've been best friends for a very long time.

In many ways, Ino was Sakura's first love.

Whenever Sakura has needed her, for anything, Ino has _always _come through. Perhaps it's selfish, she thinks, to have requested what she did. It's why she held off for so long, for months, then a year, now almost two.

Sakura wants out. Her note, nearly illegible, said as much to Ino. _Do you remember that song we loved back then?_

As if in response to her thoughts, the power in the room goes down. The lights, the machines-everything. Sakura can feel each breath as a new struggle as she's left to do it on her own and _knows _this is Ino's work when the backup generators fail to kick in.

Naruto and Kakashi are gone, rushing out to see what they can do-like either of them know anything about wiring-and Sakura tries to smile when she tilts her head and sees Ino as a paler shadow in a dark room.

"I remember," Ino says and sings softly the chorus. "_Oh my darling, set me free, it's easier than killing me softly._"

That's the song.

"You're sure?" Ino asks quietly, a lifetime of friendship in the question.

Sakura nods shallowly.

"I thought so," Ino says simply. It's a refreshing thing to have one friend who still trusts her to know what's best for her. "I… Goodnight, Sakura."

Sakura doesn't know what jutsu, if it is one, that Ino uses. All Sakura knows is spinning darkness and then…

Then there's no pain.

There's nothing.


	26. 2012: Day 27: It Gets Better

Title: It Gets Better  
>Author: Killaurey<br>Word Count: 215  
>Rating: T<p>

Written for Day 27 of the Last Fan Standing Challenge on KakaSaku's Dreamwidth community.

**Prompt: Whip Lash**

* * *

><p>"What kind of a name is Whip Lash for a villain?" Sakura asked dubiously. She was on page two of a book Kakashi had lent her (after swearing it was more than just porn) and while the prose wasn't bad… the names left something to be desired. "And he's just lounging around in his fancy house talking his evil plans out loud to himself? <em>Really?<em>"

"It's a classic," Kakashi said defensively. "I don't mock your soaps addiction, do I? It gets better. Whip Lash's eccentricities are explained!"

"I'm not sure there's an explanation for being stupid enough to monologue evil plans to yourself," Sakura replied. "Especially when he hasn't even checked security to make sure no one is listening."

"You haven't even met the heroes yet," Kakashi complains. "How could they possibly be listening in? They don't even know there's something going on."

"Then why couldn't Whip Lash just _think _his plots out? We're in his head for this! There's no need to talk!"

"Sakura," Kakashi said, "if you aren't going to give it a fair try, give me the book back."

Sakura looked at him. "… Then I'll have nothing to read."

"You're not even reading it," he pointed out.

She made a face. "Fine," Sakura conceded, "I'll give it a few more pages."


	27. 2012: Day 28 & 29: Locked Down II

Title: Locked Down II  
>Author: Killaurey<br>Word Count: 600  
>Rating: T<br>Notes: Follows Day 22 "Locked Down".

Written for Day 28 AND 29 of the Last Fan Standing Challenge on KakaSaku's Dreamwidth community. (The days were combined due to a decision on the mod's part.)

**Prompt: Pumpernickel**

* * *

><p>Sakura, though she was loathe to admit it, felt better after Ino bullied her (gently) into taking a shower and brushing her hair and getting dressed in clean clothing. She studied her reflection in the still half-fogged bathroom mirror and grimaced at the circles under her eyes.<p>

"Good," Ino said from the doorway. "If you're feeling up to making faces about your appearance, then you're feeling better."

Sakura's smile felt twisted, like a pale imitation of what it was supposed to be. "I wouldn't say that," she disagreed.

Ino lifted her shoulders in a shrug that said just how little she believed her and disappeared, heading back down the hallway. Sakura just shook her head, smiling a little despite herself. Smiling despite the worries that murmured that maybe Ino was wrong and that Kakashi was really-

No. Sakura shut down that line of thought carefully. Ino had promised her. Ino kept her promises.

She just had to believe. With that thought, Sakura headed down the hallway.

Ino wasn't in the living room and Sakura's stomach twisted unpleasantly with horror for a moment before realizing that, no, her stomach was growling because it smelled… bacon and eggs?

Sakura followed her nose towards the kitchen. Ino was there, expertly cooking up a storm. From the looks of it, Sakura realized, she wasn't getting out of here without eating.

"Pumpernickel bread?" Sakura asked dubiously as she examined what was laid out. "Did I even own that?"

Ino's grin was the sort, Sakura thought, that tended to send enemy nin fleeing from her. It wasn't really reassuring. "You do now," Ino replied. "How do you like your eggs?"

"What if I don't want eggs?" Sakura asked as she took a seat.

One of Ino's eyebrows raised incredulously.

"… Scrambled," Sakura said and Ino laughed softly. "But, seriously, where did this food come from?" She recognized the bacon from her freezer but she knew that the eggs hadn't been in her fridge and she definitely hadn't owned apricots and mangoes, both of which were piled in a fruit bowl.

For that matter, the bread wasn't something she'd have bought herself either.

"Don't worry about it," Ino told her while setting a plate of bacon on the table.

Sakura toyed with a fork. "Somehow," she said, "that's not comforting."

"Just trust me." Ino turned back to the stove.

"That's not the point," Sakura objected. "I want to know if people are going to come banging on my door because _their _breakfast foods have gone missing."

Ino glanced over her shoulder, blue eyes deeply amused. "Are you saying I'm a thief?"

"You're a ninja," Sakura pointed out. "_I'm _a ninja. We're all part thief."

"True," Ino conceded as she finished with the eggs and set the full plate down in front of Sakura. "But stop fussing. I've got this. Eat up."

Sakura stabbed the eggs-they were even seasoned, from the looks of it, to exactly her taste which suggested that Ino had known what sort of eggs she'd want _before_ ever asking Sakura-and sighed. "Yes, _Mom_."

Ino had the nerve to grin at her.

* * *

><p>For all that she worked in the hospital Sakura always found that it felt completely different to be there on a shift as opposed to visiting someone injured.<p>

The rooms seemed more sinister in the second case.

She leaned against the glass and watched Kakashi breathe.

Ino had been right. He _was _alive.

"Go say hello," Ino said. "I'm sure he'd appreciate it."

"He's sleeping."

"Doesn't mean he won't appreciate it."

Sakura's lips curled into a reluctant smile. "All right."


	28. 2012: Day 30: Game

Title: Game  
>Author: Killaurey<br>Word Count: 437  
>Rating: T<p>

Written for Day 30 of the Last Fan Standing Challenge on KakaSaku's Dreamwidth community.

**Prompt: Got Your Hotdog**

* * *

><p>Sun beat down on them, hot as a forge and heavy as a hammer, and that was entirely too depressing. She wished she'd thought to bring a wider-brimmed hat.<p>

_Help! _Sakura sent the text and then looked dubiously out at the eager crowd. Down below was a field and beside her was Kakashi's empty seat-he'd gone to get them munchies.

She still couldn't figure out why they were here. Kakashi, when she'd started dating him, hadn't seemed like the type to like sports at all unless he was playing in them.

Her phone beeped.

Ino's reply was simple and entirely unhelpful: _you could have said no._

Sakura wrinkled her nose. _he pulled puppy eyes!_

_Weak, forehead, weak._

_Like you could have refused._

_I have,_ Ino's text seemed to be mocking her and Sakura wasn't sure if that was really Ino or just… Sakura's mood. _You don't see ME getting stuck places I don't want to go._

_Shut up. _Deciding that Ino was going to be no help whatsoever, Sakura put her phone on silent and leaned forward, resting her elbows on her knees. She should, she supposed, at least try to enjoy herself.

Kakashi had probably paid a fair bit for their tickets after all. She could always drag him to some exhibit later to make up for today. Feeling a little more at ease now that she had made up her mind to enjoy this as much as possible, she waited for Kakashi.

And speak of the devil…

"Here," he said, passing her two drinks that were way too large in her opinion as he juggled their food. "Got your hotdog, just like you asked-"

"And enough candy to sink a ship," she observed. "I hope you're sharing."

His eye-the one not covered with an eyepatch-crinkled with amusement. "Let me sit down," he said, "and I'll consider it."

In short order they got themselves sorted, Sakura laughing at how much junk food he'd bought them and Kakashi insisting it was tradition, and both of them settling in for the game.

Despite herself, she thought, as the game got started and she nibbled on chips, it wasn't that bad a night.

Not, Sakura thought, that she'd tell Ino that.

"Kakashi?"

"Mmm?"

"Thanks for this."

He looked mildly bemused. "What brought that on?"

"I just like spending time with you," she said, with a shrug. Her bad mood had quite evaporated. "Just had to figure out that extended even to… this."

He kissed her cheek. She could feel his smile. "I'm glad," he said, "and the game is starting."

Sakura just shook her head.


	29. 2013: Day 1: Being Creative

Title: Being Creative  
>Author: Killaurey<br>Word Count: 500  
>Rating: T<br>Notes: Part of an AU where Kakashi travels forward in time and winds up as Sakura and Ino's sensei.

Written for Day 1 of the 2013 Last Fan Standing Challenge on KakaSaku's Dreamwidth community.

**Prompt: Pillow**

* * *

><p>Ino carefully holds up a stick, little more than a twig really, and sets it on the few strands of hair she's holding out. The hair flexes as Ino lets go and the hair wraps around the twig.<p>

"What are you _doing_?" Sakura asks, wide-eyed. "We're not supposed to use jutsu unless we're under Hatake-sensei's supervision!"

Ino's hair, still wrapped around the twig, lifts up and down a few times, looking for all the world like it's doing weight-lifting. Ino's eyes are vaguely unfocused, most of her attention focused inwards.

With a snap, Ino's twig breaks in two and Ino comes back to herself and grimaces at the pieces.

"You want to tell me what you're doing now?" Sakura asks.

Ino blinks, then her eyes widen. "Sakura! How long have you been there?"

"A while," Sakura says, appeased that Ino wasn't deliberately ignoring her. "What's all this?"

"Not a jutsu," Ino says quickly, "so I'm not breaking any of Hatake-sensei's rules. There weren't any seals involved or anything."

"Hatake-sensei's not going to count that as 'no jutsu'," Sakura says doubtfully. "Chakra was involved."

Ino makes a face at her but doesn't argue. "I haven't gotten very far," Ino admits, standing and picking up her pile of branches. Sakura helps her find more so that both of them will come back with their arms full of wood. "I was just thinking-you know in the Chuunin Exam, what I did with my hair?"

This time it's Sakura who makes a face. If it hadn't been for Inner Sakura, she would have lost. "I remember. Are you trying to replicate that while it's still on your head?"

"Sort of," Ino says with bright eyes as they start back towards camp. "I mean, how cool would that be? But that's not what I was trying to do. Not really."

Thinking of the little twig and the way Ino's hair had lifted it... "Picking things up?" Sakura guesses. "Or throwing things, even? Like... like... another arm?"

Ino beams. "That's the idea," she says, "though my hair's too short right now for that. I was just trying to figure out if it was possible."

"And?"

"It's totally possible! I mean, I suck at it now but _eventually_..."

"You need to tell Hatake-sensei," Sakura says. "He'll want to know. He might have pointers."

Not asking for help is a bad habit Sakura wants to break the both of them of. They've got a sensei now who cares.

"I guess so," Ino sighs, then slants a side-ways glance at Sakura. "You want to learn it?"

"Sure," Sakura says, though if long hair is a requirement, she won't get very fair. Sakura likes her hair short. Then, because she doesn't want Ino to get a big head, she adds, "If only so I'm the best at pillow fights."

"You wish," Ino says, looking torn between taking offence and being intrigued. "Though that _would_ make for amazing pillow fights…"

When they get back to the clearing, they're both laughing.


	30. 2013: Day 2: Opposites Attract

Title: Opposites Attract  
>Author: Killaurey<br>Word Count: 500  
>Rating: T<p>

Written for Day 2 of the 2013 Last Fan Standing Challenge on KakaSaku's Dreamwidth community.

**Prompt: Eternity**

* * *

><p>When Sakura was a little girl, she dreamed of a romantic eternity with the one she loved. In her dreams the one she loved was always tall and handsome with kind eyes but all other details kind of fuzzy in her imagination.<p>

It took a whole lot of years and tears to beat that dream out of her.

Sasuke was the first _real _blow in her dreams. She'd replaced the fuzzily thought-of man with him and even though he shot her down time and time again, she'd been certain that it was just a matter of time until he'd come around.

He hadn't. He'd left.

She was left to figure out what eternity meant when the one you wanted to spend it with didn't want you.

("We could do something fun _every day!_")

For a few years after that, Sakura tells herself that she's got no time for true love and that it's silly and she laughs about it and teases Ino for believing in it and becomes strong and lovely and careful.

Somewhere around there, she realizes that even if it's not possible for true love to last that long-she still wants to love and be loved.

It's hard not to want that when she's surrounded by people who love deeply: her parents who, while infuriating, are desperately in love with each other and watching Ino's parents is like watching an old, comfortable love story in live action, and watching Hinata's dad makes Sakura realize that it's possible to keep loving one person, just them, long after they're gone because he never, ever loves anyone else-not even his own daughters.

_One day,_ she thinks. _Just for as long as it lasts._

_That'll be good enough for me._

* * *

><p>When Kakashi is a child he doesn't believe in eternity. It's impossible to believe in it when one after another, like a house of cards, every loving bond around him snaps.<p>

He remembers finding his father. He remembers Obito dying. He remembers the feel of his hand going through Rin. He will never, ever forget the sacrifice of Minato-sensei and his brave, beautiful wife.

Love, he thinks, is something doomed to failure and cannot possibly last. Life gets in the way.

Life _does _get in the way.

It destroys his second team (his fault) and it nearly costs him his life more than once. He loses friends. He loses his _home_. (Konoha just _gone _in the blink of an eye.)

He doesn't lose her. A green-eyed girl with a temper, who tries desperately to hide it, to be more ladylike.

He nearly destroys her with his inattention but she finds her own way to bloom, bold and dangerous and lovely.

When he starts talking to her again, after years of skirting around the edges of her life, uncertain of his welcome, Kakashi isn't sure where anything is going to go.

But, privately, he hopes whatever it is will last for an eternity.

Only that would be long enough for him.


	31. 2013: Day 3: Star Struck

Title: Star Struck  
>Author: Killaurey<br>Word Count: 500  
>Rating: T<p>

Written for Day 3 of the 2013 Last Fan Standing Challenge on KakaSaku's Dreamwidth community.

**Prompt: Fanfaronade**

* * *

><p>She was a golden-eyed goddess with silky black curls that practically floated about her face.<p>

She looked nothing like Sakura in her elaborate costume of ribbons, silk, and bows that shouldn't have worked and somehow did.

She _was_Sakura.

Kakashi hated this mission.

He missed his practical, no-nonsense on the job (off-duty was different entirely) partner and resented the apparently ageless, sylph-like woman whose face and body Sakura was wearing.

Her mirror-image, the original, looked anxious as the last delicate dabs and dips of make-up were applied. "She looks like me," the original said, her voice clear and melodious. "But my show—my fans will know it's not me."

Sakura's eyes held something disturbingly akin to hero-worship. "I've been your biggest fan since I was a child, Hibari-sama. Every move, every note, I can do. I swear it. They'll never know it wasn't you for the night."

The original looked touched and somewhat discomfited at the same time (perhaps at the idea of being idolized to the point where a fan could _replace _her). "Do your best," Hibari said, a bit helplessly. "That is all I ask."

It was too late to change the mission parameters.

A man poked his head around the door. "Hibari-sama? Your ride is here."

With a quick, elegant movements Hibari, the original, stooped to sweep up a scarf which she draped around her head and shoulders, to obscure her face, then pressed a quick kiss to the fake Hibari's forehead and all but fled out the door without another word.

"She kissed me," Sakura said, sounding awed. "I am never washing my forehead again. Ino will _never _believe this."

"She messed up your make-up," Kakashi said, waving over a man to fix it.

Sakura didn't seem to hear him, too busy looking starry-eyed in a way that Kakashi felt was entirely inappropriate considering their active status on a mission.

When Sakura, a precise and perfect copy of Hibari, stepped out onto the stage fifteen minutes later to a fanfaronade of cacophonous, ecstatic, screaming fans, Kakashi felt only relief.

This would soon be over.

As the first notes of what he gathered was a major hit (judging from the renewed shrieking from the fervour that had barely died down as it was) began, Kakashi slipped away, leaving the make-up personnel (more Konoha shinobi) to clean up back-stage.

Drifting off to watch Sakura held little appeal. He didn't like the elegant stranger she'd been made into—Sakura didn't look, didn't act, didn't sound like herself right now.

Despite his distaste, as he made his way to the rendezvous point where Naruto would be, Kakashi could tell that Sakura was _nailing _every nuance of her idol's show to a disconcerting degree.

He found Naruto watching from the rafters, camcorder pressed to his face. His feet swung in time to the beat.

"… Naruto?"

"Sakura-chan wanted me to record it!"

"This is a mission," Kakashi said, resigned to losing this battle. "Not a—_lark_."

Naruto just shrugged, entirely unconcerned.


	32. 2013: Day 4: Behind the Scenes

Title: Behind the Scenes  
>Author: Killaurey<br>Word Count: 500  
>Rating: T<p>

Written for Day 4 of the 2013 Last Fan Standing Challenge on KakaSaku's Dreamwidth community.

**Prompt: Disappointment**

* * *

><p>Sakura finds Ino sitting cross-legged on a tarp that's been spread on the floor of one of the Yamanaka greenhouses, clad head-to-toe in protective gear and sorting deadly plants. Ino works silently and diligently and Sakura skirts around the danger zone—she knows, thanks to the gear Ino wears, that the plants are touch-poisonous—and grabs her own protective gear, which is really Ino's second set.<p>

Once dressed, Sakura makes her way over to where Ino is, kneels down beside her and just leans against her best friend, then rival, now something more tried and true. Sakura has faith in Ino where she has lost it in everyone else.

"Kakashi-sensei saved my life," she announces, her voice brittle. Her eyes sting but remain dry.

Ino glances at her, expression impossible to read through the masks they both wear. Sakura can guess though. "You've been in the village lately." It's a fish hook for more information.

"Sasuke-kun and Naruto tried to kill each other," Sakura says glumly, watching as Ino strips a plant of leaves. She knows better than to try and help in this. This is a Yamanaka art. It's enough to simply be allowed to be here and not told to leave.

"I got in the way to try and stop them and they would have…"

"They would have killed you," Ino says flatly, chillily. "If Kakashi-sensei hadn't gotten in the way."

Slowly, Sakura nods. That's exactly right. Her mind still reels with the horror of being on the rooftop, both of the boys with glowing hands, techniques that are far out of her reach and going for each other.

With her in the middle of it all.

Ino's hands grow very still.

"The worst part is," Sakura says, in a high voice, one that's too thin to be composed. "The worst part is—I think Kakashi-sensei would have done it for anyone. Saved them, I mean. I don't think it mattered that it was me."

She feels crushingly, horrifically small. Worthless. She's hoped so hard for a good team and even in the dreams where she'd moderated her hopes to reality, she's never been so disappointed as she has been with real life.

Ino slips one arm around her. "I will always see you," Ino promises. "Even when no one else will."

It's that fierce, stubborn vow that makes Sakura cry. Slow, painful sobs that well up from deep within her chest to spill over incoherently as the hurt she feels unravels just a little bit.

She doesn't know if she's crying because she matters to someone or because she should have mattered to more. She's only thirteen and Genin and everything is wrong.

(Somehow, somewhere, she feels like it's all her fault.)

Ino hugs her and remains with her until her tears dry up and she feels achy and gross and better all at the same time.

All Ino says, during and after, is: "It'll get better. I promise."

Sakura believes her.

(But she doesn't see how.)


	33. 2013: Day 5: Never Gone

Title: Never Gone  
>Author: Killaurey<br>Word Count: 500  
>Rating: T<br>**Warnings: Horror & Character Death**

Written for Day 5 of the 2013 Last Fan Standing Challenge on KakaSaku's Dreamwidth community.

**Prompt: Hatching**

* * *

><p>Sakura disappears during a mission in Suna.<p>

Kakashi feels like his entire world has fallen apart while she's gone (but he keeps moving because he has to) and when she comes back, three months later, he doesn't know what to feel.

He's relieved—even moreso once ANBU clears her as sane and uncompromised and not a threat to the village—and he's uneasy.

She talks the same, and she smells the same, she tastes, looks, sounds the same. He loves her. When she looks at him, he can tell that she loves him.

But slowly, certainly, he becomes adamantly convinces that she's _not Sakura_.

He checks the debrief records (illegally); they're in order. He teases memories out of her. Sakura remembers everything.

His doubts should be allayed. They're not. Kakashi watches, loves, and wonders why he does not run screaming.

* * *

><p>When he's proven right, it happens fast.<p>

* * *

><p>He gets home from a mission, tired and bruised but otherwise unharmed. The scent of blood hits his nose as he opens the door. <em>Sakura's blood.<em>

Sakura isn't in the living room or the kitchen. There are scattered, broken shells lying about and he steps on a piece (the crack echoes through the apartment like an explosive tag going off) and Kakashi, thinking only of Sakura, thinks nothing of them.

(That's his first mistake.)

The bedroom door is cracked and he pushes it open, heart pounding in his throat.

Sakura stares up at him from the floor, her green eyes dull and lifeless, her body shredded, like something had clawed its way out of her.

Kakashi stares, horrified and devastated.

(That's his second mistake.)

There's the skitter-patter of many little feet and then a weight lands on his back, pushing him down. Mandibles thicker than his wrists come into view.

Kakashi snaps out of his shock as training and instinct take over.

But there's more than one of them.

(And it's too late.)

He'd been right. 

* * *

><p>Konoha falls in months.<p>

Kakashi and Sakura's deaths are written off as a peculiar murder—most probably a successful mission from another village. It's sad. It's awful. It happens.

Then things get worse. First it's a death here and there. An entire family, found dead, found shredded. Egg shells are found by their bodies. Then another family, and another.

The shells disappear within hours. No evidence left behind.

The Byakugan cannot see anything unusual. (Then they see nothing; their sight is stolen.) The Aburame and Inuzuka Clans implode, their animal-counterparts going mad. The Yamanaka Clan finds no leads in anyone's mind.

(Days later the entire Yamanaka Clan is dead.)

From there, it is only a matter of time.

* * *

><p>It's said that if you stand at the edge of what used to be Konohagakure no Sato and listen long and hard, sometimes you can hear a voice.<p>

It's always a girl's. Stories have it that her name is Sakura, after the first victim.

"I'm sorry," she'll say. "I'm so, _so _sorry."

Then you die.


	34. 2013: Day 6: Let Me See

Title: Let Me See  
>Author: Killaurey<br>Word Count: 500  
>Rating: T<p>

Written for Day 6 of the 2013 Last Fan Standing Challenge on KakaSaku's Dreamwidth community.

**Prompt: Prophecy **

* * *

><p>Sakura keeps a diary. Actually, she keeps two. One is for the everyday stuff.<p>

The other is for what she Sees.

When she's younger, it's something of a dream diary, though all the dreams she writes down happen when she's awake.

_While shelling peas with Mom, I Saw a man with silver hair, one eye, and a mask. He looked really cool._

Then, because she's eight and her world revolves around her parents, Ino, and Sasuke, she adds:

_Not as cool as Sasuke-kun though. And way, way too old. Yuck._

When she's nine she writes:

_I saw Ino-chan falling out of a tree! She fell and fell and didn't move when she landed._

Because Ino is away on vacation with her family, Sakura cries herself to sleep that night, terrified over losing her best friend. When Ino gets back, unharmed, a week later, Sakura cries again.

Ino falls out of a tree three months later and is in a coma for a week.

That's when Sakura starts paying attention to what she Sees instead of dismissing them as flights of fancy.

Some times what she Sees really is just little things. Twice she Sees her parents kiss each other goodbye in the morning, which always strikes her as ridiculous and a waste of her ability because she sees them kiss each other goodbye in real time, every morning.

By the time she's twelve and graduates to become a kunoichi, Sakura has Seen twenty-four visions of Sasuke (which get progressively grimmer), thirty-nine visions of Naruto (about which half are really scary and the other half are really lovely), and nearly a hundred of Ino (most of them are little, everyday things but some a very sad and some are happy; like Naruto, Ino is a mess of extremes, wherever the future will take her).

She's also had fifty-seven visions of the silver-haired man.

When he becomes her sensei, she's not that surprised.

(Though she is extremely disappointed by how uncool he is. He always seemed cooler when she Saw him.)

* * *

><p>Sakura is sixteen the first time she Sees herself kissing her sensei. She yelps, flings herself away from the kitchen sink, and stares at it like it's a viper.<p>

Once she's over her shock, she finishes the dishes, writes down the vision, and makes a note that it will never, ever happen because _ew_.

She tells Ino about her vision, though she calls it a true-dream instead, and they have a good laugh about it over ice cream.

* * *

><p>When that first kiss happens, Sakura is twenty, wearing her formal medic-nin uniform, and tired and dirty from an emergency shift at the hospital.<p>

The kiss is soft, sweet, and exacting.

She steals another one.

(He doesn't mind.)

* * *

><p>Sakura rereads her Sight diary every now and then. When she finds her note about kissing her sensei, she amends it.<p>

_It's really very nice._

And there're a lot of things in her book that aren't.

The good needs to be remembered.


	35. 2013: Day 7: Seeking Rin

Title: Seeking Rin  
>Author: Killaurey<br>Word Count: 500  
>Rating: T<br>Notes: Like it says on the tin, this is a snippet of Seeking Rin-quite a lot further into the story than is posted. **Don't read if you don't want spoilers.**

Written for Day 7 of the 2013 Last Fan Standing Challenge on KakaSaku's Dreamwidth community.

**Prompt: Chance**

* * *

><p>Sakura, with a cloaking jutsu wrapped tightly around her, her chakra muffled and suppressed, her footfalls silent, wanders the bare, white halls of the empty medical facility and tries hard to not even <em>breathe <em>loudly

Her heart is the loudest thing she can hear. It beats in her ears.

She strains her mind, looking for Ino in the back of it, like Ino so often has been, but it's like a broken TV: nothing but a susurrus of static. Ino's not there.

(Or if she is, she's broken. Sakura prefers to believe she's not there.)

Passing an elevator and deeming it too dangerous to take, Sakura looks for the stairs. Every room is locked tight, warded with jutsu that she doesn't dare take the time to unravel. She'd be worried but Ino gave her the room number.

This isn't the right floor.

It's frustrating to go slow and so tempting to hurry. Sakura holds herself back and makes each step deliberate, each move a caution.

_I've only got one chance at this,_ she reminds herself. _Just one. I have to make the most of it._

She can't afford any screw ups.

Finding the stairwell, Sakura inches down it, keeping her eyes peeled and sending her chakra out in tiny, (hopefully) unnoticeable tendrils to search for life, for anything that might be a danger.

Three floors pass in this manner and by the time Sakura hits the fifth floor, she's exhausted and sweat-soaked. As a medical nin, she can hold the most demanding medical jutsu for hours. Concealment jutsu aren't her field. They're harder.

But _finally, _she's on the right floor.

This floor is as barren and cold as the other. Sakura creeps down the hall, scanning the doorways, searching for their numbers. The numbers get closer to her target number and the doors change. Little windows, barred with steel mesh and chakra-enhanced wire begin appearing. The windows are set higher than she is tall; the doors are huge.

The jutsu surrounding the doors grow in strength until even just walking down the hall is an act of will because with every step, Sakura feels like she's suffocating, like she's dying.

She keeps moving.

A familiar-yet-unfamiliar chakra signature brushes her senses. Sakura stops even though the door's number is wrong and goes up on tiptoe to peer inside.

Kakashi lies on a metal bed, strapped down. His muscles press against the restraints as he tries to free himself, his face full of pure, stark terror and hideous pain.

Something has its head buried in his stomach. Blood is everywhere.

Sakura lifts her hands, calling chakra to them to break the door in—

_No,_ Ino's voice says weakly. _Don't._

Her chakra splutters and fades. _Why not? _Sakura demands.

_It's… a cure… _Ino's voice disappears, the static back and stronger.

Sakura stares in at Kakashi and, steeling herself, turns away from him. "I'll be back," she swears.

Then she starts running, heedless of the danger.

Ino's dying. She knows it in her soul.


	36. 2013: Day 8: If You Want Something Done

Title: If You Want Something Done...  
>Author: Killaurey<br>Word Count: 500  
>Rating: T<p>

Written for Day 8 of the 2013 Last Fan Standing Challenge on KakaSaku's Dreamwidth community.

**Prompt: Breathe**

* * *

><p>Hatake collapses bonelessly, his breathing deep and slow. Ino steps around his fallen body and glances at Sakura, who is putting away a syringe, <em>You're going to be in trouble for that, <em>she thinks.

Sakura grins tightly. _I know. But we're going to be in trouble anyway. What's a little more at this point?_

Ino can't argue that. _How long?_

_Forty-eight hours if left untreated. We've got sixteen with treatment. We'll base our lead time on that._ Sakura kneels by Kakashi and coolly strips him of his weapons. _Can you hide his body?_

_Already on it._Ino's hands fly through jutsu, carefully using only the bare minimum chakra needed to create an illusion that would be enough to pass casual inspection.

It's a dark alley already, so there's no need for too complicated a genjutsu.

Sakura steps back from her former sensei's body and stows the last of his weapons away. Ino lets the jutsu settle seamlessly into place.

They both watch as Hatake disappears from view. A Hyuuga or someone skilled with genjutsu will be able to see through it but that's alright. They've still bought themselves time.

_Good, _Sakura says.

_Of course it is,_ Ino replies. _I'm better than you._

_You wish._

They leave the alley, in a swirl of leaves and smoke to reappear on a rooftop four blocks over.

"Got everything you need?" Ino asks. "No last minute detours?"

"Nah," Sakura says. "I'm good to go if you are. Let's just grab our bags and get out of here."

Their bags are held at a hotel near the west gate. Retrieving them takes two seconds (they go in through the windows of their room) and sling them over their shoulders. Ino perches a pair of glasses on her head. They're pink and silly. Sakura sticks a couple of whimsical barrettes in her hair.

They study each other gravely.

"It's close enough," Ino says. "We won't be able to dress for vacation until we're there."

Sakura's smile says she appreciates the discretion. It's not vacation they're going on. "It's not like we can wear bathing suits from here to Water Country," she points out as they wander casually down the street, heading for the gates to get out of Konoha.

"Well," Ino says slowly, "we could. We'd look stupid, but we could."

"I'm not," Sakura says firmly as they stroll through the gates with casual waves. The gate-Chuunin pay them no mind and they bicker idly about vacation-wear as until they're just about an hour away from the village.

Then the glasses are tucked away and the barrettes are shoved into pockets. _Ready to run, Forehead? _Ino asks.

_As if I'd be anything else. Come on, let's go. Keep your mind open. If we get pick up a tail, you'll know before me._

_True. It's going to be you they're after though. It's not every day that the Hokage's star pupil turns missing nin._

Sakura's eyes flash. _Then they should have gotten the job done properly before._


	37. 2013: Day 9: It Ends Well (For Some)

Title: It Ends Well (For Some)  
>Author: Killaurey<br>Word Count: 150  
>Rating: T<p>

Written for Day 9 of the 2013 Last Fan Standing Challenge on KakaSaku's Dreamwidth community.

**Prompt: Glitter**

* * *

><p><p>

Sakura hefts the bag and then, not liking the weight of it, opens and peers into it. She tries very hard not to breathe at all while looking in the bag. Shutting it carefully, she pins Naruto with a look.

"Are you sure this is all the glitter you could find?"

He rubs the back of his head and laughs loudly. "I did the best I could, Sakura-chan! That's the lot!"

"It's not as much as I wanted," Naruto wilts, "but it should do."

He perks up and beams at her. "What are you going to do, Sakura-chan?"

Sakura pulls on her most innocent expression. "You'll find out."

He pouts and mopes and whines but she doesn't relent. Once he's gone, Sakura hugs the bag to her chest, spins in a gleeful, exuberant, messy circle, and makes a break for Ino's house.

_Kakashi-sensei isn't going to know what hit him!_


	38. 2013: Day 10: Beholder's Eyes

Title: Beholder's Eyes  
>Author: Killaurey<br>Word Count: 200  
>Rating: T<p>

Written for Day 10 of the 2013 Last Fan Standing Challenge on KakaSaku's Dreamwidth community.

**Prompt: Epopt**

* * *

><p>It's no secret that the very first person outside of her family that Sakura loved was Ino. Even now, older and stronger and able to stand on her own two feet, Sakura envies Ino and the way she (dances) moves (effortlessly) through life.<p>

Privately, she has always considered Ino to be an epopt of _life_ itself.

This belief is why, when she finds Ino hooked up to equipment that's half-medical and half-unrecognizable and hardly more than a wraith of herself, Sakura sees past the weaknesses.

Ino looks like a butterfly—fragile and breakable and beautiful. But Sakura knows that if Ino's a butterfly, she's one made of steel and poison. The fragility is deceptive.

(But Ino's dying.)

Ino won't break because Ino always wins.

(But Ino's dying.)

"Sakura," Ino says. "Let me see you."

Sakura moves closer, hesitant with every step. Ino is still beautiful to her.

(But _Ino's dying_.)

It's not supposed to be this way.

"Smile," Ino says, her wispy voice echoing a beat behind in the back of Sakura's head. "You've got a pretty face. How is anyone supposed to know if you don't show it off confidently?"

"What's been _done_ to you?" Sakura asks, voice breaking.


	39. 2013: Day 11: Stolen Child

Title: Stolen Child  
>Author: Killaurey<br>Word Count: 300  
>Rating: T<br>Notes: Crossover with Final Fantasy VII

Written for Day 11 of the 2013 Last Fan Standing Challenge on KakaSaku's Dreamwidth community.

**Prompt: Stolen**

* * *

><p>Midgar is a dreadful place. Sakura hates the fact that she and Ino have already accomplished their mission and are lingering in the enemy's lair. She misses the sun with an itch that leaves her peevish.<p>

"Okay," Sakura says, pacing around the hotel room they've rented and secured, "we get in, get the kid, and get out."

Ino finishes wrapping bandages around her hands, tucks in the ends, and flexes her fingers to ensure mobility is good. Her pupil-less blue eyes are determined and fiercely, incredibly focused. "That's right."

"You're a madwoman."

"You're coming with me," Ino counters, smiling slightly. The smile doesn't soften the look in her eyes at all. "I'm not heading back to Konoha without that kid."

"And _I'm_ not going back without you, unreasonable wretch that you are." Sakura studies the building—it's impossible to miss, being the focal point of the entire city. Sector 0, so to speak. "You got a plan to get rid of those people in suits?"

"Persistent jerks," Ino mutters. "Thank god for translocation jutsu and the fact they can't do it. I was planning to keep it short and sweet. Hit up the bathroom, land in the building, disguise-jutsu ourselves into employees and just grab the kid and get out."

Sakura can point out about a hundred flaws in that plan.

She doesn't.

It sort of appeals to her in its simplicity.

"What's your dad going to say 'bout the kid?"

Ino just shakes her head. "He'll love him," she says flatly. "Though it doesn't matter. He's _mine_."

"If you have to steal him," Sakura says, "he's not yours."

Ino elbows her. Hard. "My stolen child, then," Ino says. "I can't leave him here."

"_Why?_"

More than anything, Sakura doesn't understand that.

"I don't know," Ino says, "but it's true."


	40. 2013: Day 12: Past Echoes

Title: Past Echoes  
>Author: Killaurey<br>Word Count: 200  
>Rating: T<p>

Written for Day 12 of the 2013 Last Fan Standing Challenge on KakaSaku's Dreamwidth community.

**Prompt: Empty Houses**

* * *

><p><p>

This," Kakashi says, "is my father's house."

Sakura follows his gaze, frowning at his words. His father has been dead longer than she's been alive—it can't be his house because it belongs to Kakashi now.

But she knows better than to say anything. There are some places, many, where they've patched things up between them.

Jabbing him in places he hasn't healed won't help either of them.

"It's large," she says, because she can't say anything like 'it's lovely' or 'it's well-kept'; neither was true.

Privately, she thinks the house looks sad with all the windows boarded up, the wood sun-bleached and the whole thing giving off an almost palpable air of despair.

She wonders why they're here, what possessed him to come this way with her. It had just been a walk.

This was more than just a subject for a walk.

Kakashi stares at the building, saying nothing, for a long moment. In that moment Sakura glances at the surrounding buildings.

They are empty too.

She frowns. These houses are in a nice area of town. As far as location goes, there's hardly any place better in Konoha.

So why are there a number of empty houses?


	41. 2013: Day 13: Shine

Title: Shine  
>Author: Killaurey<br>Word Count: 500  
>Rating: T<p>

Written for Day 13 of the 2013 Last Fan Standing Challenge on KakaSaku's Dreamwidth community.

**Prompt: Butterfly**

* * *

><p>Sakura sighs. Deeply.<p>

Kakashi sits under the tree-and is it the same tree or a different one? they all seem to be the same sort of tree, at the very least-and watches her calmly.

He says nothing.

At least he's not reading his porn again.

"What story is it this time?" she asks, scowling. "More lessons on true love?"

This was a sick, unfunny game her mind had dreamed up and when she got out of it, she was going to make sure she never, ever dreamed this again. How, Sakura hadn't quite decided, but surely Ino could find a way.

"Not when you sound like that," Kakashi replies mildly, reaching now for his book. "You need to learn patience. Temperance."

Sakura's temper seethes as she clamps her mouth shut on the retorts she wants to give that.

"See? You're already learning."

Her temper fizzles and pops. "I don't want _any_ lessons to love!" Sakura shouts. "I don't understand why you keep winding up as my princess, I don't understand this stupid fairy tale hell that I'm stuck in, I don't understand why any of this is even necessary! Just get out of my head! I don't need the lessons."

Kakashi doesn't even bother to look up. He turns to the next page. "The fact that you think you don't need them," he said, "just means that you need them even more."

Sakura begins deeply reconsidering her vow to never, ever hit her precious people outside of training and _mean_ it. "I don't _want_ the lessons," she says, leaning over and getting right up in his face. "I don't _need_ the lessons. You can take them and get the hell out of my mind."

He meets her gaze and smiles faintly. "I'm sorry, Sakura," he says, "but I'm afraid that I can't."

She straightens up. "Why not?"

"That's confidential."

Her eyes narrow. "This is _my_ dream. I say what's confidential or not."

"You know that's not always true." Kakashi sighs and puts his book away, muttering about not even being able to read with her around. "Look, your lesson this time isn't on love. Why not try and deal with that and just... take it one step at a time. And ask Ino next time you see her. She might know more."

Sakura glowers at him for a long moment. "Ino's going to be more help than you are," she informs him.

"Probably," he agrees.

"Just letting you know." Her voice is flat. She struggles with herself for a minute. "So what do I have to do to learn patience?"

Kakashi reaches into his pocket and pulls out a... cocoon. "Watch this," he says, handing it over to her. "It'll open up eventually."

She gapes at it. "You're seriously telling me I've got to stick around here until this thing becomes a butterfly?"

"I didn't make the rules," Kakashi notes. "I just follow them."

"I want them rewritten," Sakura grumbles, sitting down in the snow. "Now. This _sucks._"


	42. 2013: Day 14: Chew Toy

Title: Chew Toy  
>Author: Killaurey<br>Word Count: 500  
>Rating: T<p>

Written for Day 14 of the 2013 Last Fan Standing Challenge on KakaSaku's Dreamwidth community.

**Prompt: Rise**

* * *

><p>Ino nudges the ripped up corpse with one sandaled foot. "So," she says conversationally, "you think they got on the wrong side of an Inuzuka?"<p>

Sakura kneels down to study the wounds. "You might be right," Sakura replies, making a face. "They certainly look… mauled."

"Giant claws," Ino says unhelpfully, her voice airy and obnoxiously light-hearted. Sakura would be irritated but she knows better than to assume that just because Ino doesn't sound like she cares that she really doesn't care. "Ripped. Shredded. Oh look, I think it was chewing on their arm bone a bit."

"We can't wander into the Inuzuka Clan and ask 'oh hey, have you mauled someone in the village lately? Because you know, that's kinda against the rules.' Ino, they'd maul _us_. Even if they didn't do this, they'd certainly do that for the insult." She follows Ino's gaze and has to shudder.

Ino is right; it does look like someone was chewing on the arm.

"We should report it to the ANBU," Sakura says, while Ino picks her way over to another scrap of body and fabric soaked in blood.

"One ANBU reporting for duty," Ino says, snapping off a mocking salute. "Though you're right. Maybe the higher-ups. Wouldn't want them to think we did it or anything."

"As if we could," Sakura scoffs. "Neither of us have real claws."

"Grr," Ino says. "Arg."

Despite herself, Sakura laughs. "I hate you."

"Liar." Ino walks around the corpse, careful not to get her sandals in the blood, and leans over. "Hey, what's this?"

Sakura wanders over curiously. The two of them study the bloody letters—such a cliché—thoughtfully.

"R-I-S-E," she says doubtfully. "Like, rising from the dead?"

"Vampires don't usually maul their victims, Forehead. Also: fictional."

"Do you have a better idea, Pig?"

"Rewards and Incentives for School Educators," Ino replies promptly.

Sakura pulls back to just _look_ at her.

Ino shrugs. "What? Iruka-sensei's a member of their board. It's a not-for-profit thing."

Sakura doesn't doubt that it's true. "But how does that matter to this?"

"That," Ino says, "I can't tell you."

They're both silent for a few moments.

"…maybe this was a board member? In which case, ew, death has not improved him."

"Let's bring this to the Hokage's attention," Sakura suggests, swallowing again the inappropriate urge to laugh. "Genjutsu the crap out of this crime scene and we'll get ANBU—other ANBU-to come look at it."

"You just want to get out of here before I make you laugh," Ino accuses, fingers flying through intricate combinations of seals.

"Actually," Sakura says dryly, "I want to make sure that Iruka-sensei's safe."

"Right. Go with the serious answer. And you wonder why no one dates you." For all of that, though, Ino's genjutsu take shape quickly and expertly.

"People don't date me because they're scared of you," Sakura says, once they're up on the rooftops and making their way for the Hokage's office. "After what you did to Ryouma."

Ino scoffs. "Details!"


	43. 2013: Day 15: Found Wanting

Title: Found Wanting  
>Author: Killaurey<br>Word Count: 500  
>Rating: T<p>

Written for Day 15 of the 2013 Last Fan Standing Challenge on KakaSaku's Dreamwidth community.

**Prompt: "I can make it disappear..."**

* * *

><p><p>

Ino jerks away from her, her ponytail smacking Sakura solidly across the face. Sakura swallows hard, tells herself to not be a coward, and catches up to Ino.

"Ino," she says, "please, I know you're mad. I'm sorry."

"Sorry doesn't cut it."

"I don't understand why _not_."

The next thing Sakura knows is that her arms and legs are pinned to the ground. Each finger held separately by strands of long, golden hair that glow with chakra.

She should be scared.

But it's Ino's jutsu that holds her down. It's Ino's jutsu that's grown Ino's hair past the point of all reason, until there's piles and piles of it that have wound around Sakura like dangerous snakes.

Ino's eyes are colder than the frozen skies above them.

Sakura has never, ever seen Ino this angry-_at her_. Something inside of her shrivels up. The look is what does it; not the true danger she's in. Ino won't hurt her—physically.

It's not Ino's style.

"Don't give me that bullshit, Sakura."

"Ino," she says, "you have to—you said that you would."

"_I_ said no such thing." Each word is clipped and carefully enunciated.

"We need to go back," Sakura tries, hoping this will work. "We can't just go."

"_Can't we?_"

"I know you don't like him!" Sakura erupts because it's better than wanting to cry because, oh god, Ino hates her now and she can hardly stand to think that let alone face the idea that Ino might be right to because this is all Sakura's fault. "But we can't just go back."

Ino just arches one fine eyebrow. A silent 'oh yeah? Watch me'.

"Ino," she pleads, "we can't. Please. How could you live with yourself if you didn't?"

"If I want to," Ino says, "I can make it disappear."

The thought is awful and unpleasant and undeniably true. It makes Sakura's stomach twist dreadfully, until she feels like she's going to vomit. "I—"

Ino steps back. Sakura slumps to the ground as the hair lets her go. On her hands, on every bit of exposed skin that had been covered with hair, are chakra burns.

(How much chakra does Ino have these days, she wonders and doesn't dare ask. Not right now.)

The burns sting and ache painfully but Sakura's felt worse.

"I'm not going to," Ino says, turning away. "I see no reason to. I'll be able to live with myself just fine. _I don't care_."

Sakura doesn't have to be able to read minds—which is good, because she can't—to know that Ino is speaking the truth.

(Hadn't Ino said as much, days ago? It feels like years; a different lifetime.)

Ino doesn't care about very many people.

"Do it for me!" Sakura snaps at Ino's back. "If you love me, do it for me, then!"

Ino's back goes very, very still.

Sakura holds her breath. Doesn't dare move.

"Sorry," her oldest, truest friend says, sounding like she means it. "But not this. Never."


	44. 2013: Day 16: Team Socks

Title: Team Socks  
>Author: Killaurey<br>Word Count: 100  
>Rating: T<p>

Written for Day 16 of the 2013 Last Fan Standing Challenge on KakaSaku's Dreamwidth community.

**Prompt: Socks**

* * *

><p><strong><strong>

The first thing Sakura buys with her very first Genin paycheque is a pair of socks. They're dark blue with tiny orange and white stars on them.

Naruto just laughs when he finds out. Sasuke rolls his eyes.

Ino says, "If that's what makes you happy, Forehead," which pleases and irritates Sakura in equal measure because they're not friends-they're rivals.

Kakashi-sensei looks at the socks for a long time and says, "There's no red."

"It would look funny," she says.

"Where are you, then?"

Sakura beams at him. "I wear them."

(He gets it, even if the others don't.)


	45. 2013: Day 17: New Tenant

Title: New Tenant  
>Author: Killaurey<br>Word Count: 150  
>Rating: T<p>

Written for Day 17 of the 2013 Last Fan Standing Challenge on KakaSaku's Dreamwidth community.

**Prompt: Vacuum**

* * *

><p>"Oh god, <em>gross<em>," Ino said, standing in the doorway of Naruto's apartment.

Sakura looked up from the strip of carpet she'd just vacuumed. The carpet was a rather pleasant beige colour—where she'd vacuumed.

On either side of the strip, the carpet was nearly black and choked with dust and dirt and god knew what else.

"Yeah," Sakura said grimly. "I _told_ you we were waging war."

"War is cleaner," Ino objected. "Where's Hatake? He didn't skip out, did he?"

Sakura made a face. "I set him to tossing the trash in the kitchen."

"And he _listened_?"

"It's not like he's got much choice, is it?" Sakura pointed out. "He can't stay at my parents', your apartment is a no-go, his apartment is even worse—it's got to be here. So he's got to clean it out, unless he wants to be surrounded by bugs and worse trash."

Ino sighed.


	46. 2013: Day 18: Guide You

Title: Guide You  
>Author: Killaurey<br>Word Count: 500  
>Rating: T<p>

Written for Day 18 of the 2013 Last Fan Standing Challenge on KakaSaku's Dreamwidth community.

**Prompt: Xenagogue**

* * *

><p>Sakura's body is translucent. She is nothing but a shimmering bit of light and thoughts.<p>

That's when she knows she's dead.

(She doesn't remember dying.)

Spinning around in a motion that's more like a whirlpool's twist of water than a true turning, Sakura studies her surroundings. Her heart—well, no, not her heart but the feelings she associates with it—sinks.

This is her home. She recognizes the yellow bathroom flung carelessly over the back of a chair. She knows that rug that's just a little askew because she walks over it every day and it never stays quite put. Her dishes from breakfast are sitting in the sink.

(It's like saying 'hey, even if I don't come back, someone lives here'.)

Can she still say she lives here, Sakura wonders, when she doesn't really exist?

(Or _does_ she exist and just has to alter her definition of what existence means?)

_Well_, she thinks, _just try to kick me out._.

* * *

><p>Sakura watches as people find her dead. (She finds her body in her bedroom, collapsed against the dresser.)<p>

She watches Naruto go into denial.

Kakashi-sensei's face goes grave and resigned. Sorrow is deep writ in his eye but he busies himself with alerting ANBU and sending a message to the Hokage.

Ino gets there as the ANBU are leaving.

Sakura watches as Ino's face goes utterly and completely blank. Mask-like. Whatever she's thinking, Ino isn't sharing.

It's very depressing watching people take your body away, she discovers.

(But it's worse, she finds, to be left behind watching the people she loves the best grieve.)

* * *

><p>After her funeral, Sakura starts wondering what she's supposed to do now. Shouldn't something or someone come to take her away?<p>

If it was hard, and it was, to watch her friends mourn her, Sakura wants absolutely nothing to do with the fact that eventually they'll move on and forget her.

She doesn't want to be forgotten.

Kakashi-sensei has tied a red ribbon around his left wrist in remembrance, since her name isn't carved on the memorial stone. Ino has stolen every single one of her medical journals and jutsu development scrolls and is working on them like she's possessed, determined to do something with even the most undeveloped of ideas. Ino has also stolen Sakura's chocolate stash, her jewelry, her trashy romance novels, and the old, tattered red ribbon that had symbolized so much between them.

Naruto has taken only her pictures.

Sakura loves them all desperately.

(She still wants to move on.)

* * *

><p>"Oh! There you are!" A girl's voice gets her attention.<p>

Sakura looks around, trying to figure out who sounded like that—it's like sparkles against her skin, sharp and prickly but not unpleasant either.

She freezes.

"It's okay," a dead girl says, as shimmery and formless as Sakura. "I'm here to show you the way! Sorry about being so late. I'm Rin."

_Kakashi's_ Rin.

_What's a traitor here to show me the way for?_ Sakura wonders, horrified. _I'm loyal!_


	47. 2013: Day 19: Past Echoes

Title: Past Echoes  
>Author: Killaurey<br>Word Count: 500  
>Rating: T<p>

Written for Day 19 of the 2013 Last Fan Standing Challenge on KakaSaku's Dreamwidth community.

**Prompt: Smudge**

* * *

><p>"What's wrong with the other houses?" Sakura asks quietly. There's no real reason to be quiet, not that she can think of, but it feels right.<p>

Which she supposes is reason enough.

"Hm?" Kakashi's tone is hard to read.

"They're all empty," she says. "If it was due to war, they'd have been bought out by now by new families. This is a good area."

"This street isn't," Kakashi replies. His entire demeanour screams that he's at ease, that he's comfortable.

It's too perfectly relaxed.

Kakashi is the farthest thing from calm and collected underneath the underneath. Sakura isn't sure when she's learned how to read him but considers it a good thing.

"No?"

"No." He hesitates a moment and then takes a few steps. "Come on," Kakashi says, "let's go in."

A thrill of excitement and apprehension shot through her. "Are you sure?"

He doesn't bother to answer, just makes his way to the door and unlocks it with a complicated series of handseals. The door creaks open, dust falling to the ground.

Sakura follows silently.

* * *

><p>The inside of the house is large and sad.<p>

Once inside Kakashi seems disinclined to talk and remains silent as Sakura drifts through the house, her sandals smudging and smearing the dust and grim that's accumulated on the floors.

Decades old pictures linger on furniture that's coated thickly with dust and cobwebs. Cushions and blankets are moth-eaten and unusable. Once brightly-coloured paintings are dull and lifeless.

It gives her the creeps.

But mostly it makes her sad.

Everywhere she looks there's evidence of the family that had once lived here. It's written in the chair that's pushed back at an angle from a reading table. It's found in the silverware that had been left to dry by the sink and never put away.

She finds a small plaque hanging from a door handle. _Kakashi's Room_ is written on it in wobbly, blocky letters. Sakura wonders how old Kakashi had been when he made it.

Wary of Kakashi's somber silence, Sakura doesn't ask. She glances inquiringly at him and, when he nods, opens the door to his old room.

It's lonely.

There's no toys in it, save for an old stuffed dolphin that sits on top of the dresser, more like a decoration than a toy. Against the wall is a weapons rack and, beside it, a rack for scrolls. The bed his hauntingly similar to the one he uses now (which she's seen only due to Naruto and his pranks and her own inability to resist going along with him sometimes).

Sakura wonders if Kakashi had ever been a child.

Even the wallpaper is simple and plain. Nothing whimsical or childlike about it.

She thinks that Kakashi was cheated out of it. He should have had a chance to have a silly wallpaper with stars or robots or whatever he'd liked on it. He should have had toys.

Only then does Sakura realize that Kakashi hasn't followed her into his old bedroom.


	48. 2013: Day 20: Past Echoes

Title: Past Echoes  
>Author: Killaurey<br>Word Count: 500  
>Rating: T<p>

Written for Day 20 of the 2013 Last Fan Standing Challenge on KakaSaku's Dreamwidth community.

**Prompt: On a scale of one to ten**

* * *

><p>All of a sudden his room seems too stifling. It is one thing, Sakura thinks, to explore it when Kakashi is watching—but another thing altogether to do it alone. Giving the room a last look, her eyes lingering on the stuffed dolphin, Sakura leaves his old bedroom quietly.<p>

His plaque clatters against the door; the loudest sound in the house. Kakashi isn't in the hallway. There is a set of dusty footprints heading deeper into the house. _His_.

She hesitates for a long moment, uncertain if she should follow him, and then begins tracing his steps.

He's brought her this far.

If he wanted her to leave, he would have told her.

Sakura tells herself that and tries to pretend the justification doesn't ring hollow in the back of her mind. (If he wanted her to stay, after all, he could have told her. What he should have done cuts both ways.)

To give him time if he changes his mind about not speaking, Sakura moves slowly through the house. It is a monument to a forgotten family. On the upstairs landing she finds a book with a scrap of paper marking place (just past halfway) and she has to stop and swallow a lump in her throat.

It's hard, when she keeps thinking about how someone never got to finish reading the book that she gently picks up. Hard, when she thinks about how those dishes never got put away and how someone had gotten up from a chair they'd never come back to.

Hard to think of a bedroom that had belonged to a child who hadn't been raised as one.

On a scale of one to ten… Sakura cannot rate the heavy, breathless sorrow that permeates the house.

Other than high. She knows that much.

But it's a different sorrow than what she's used to. Her sorrows bite and pinch and stab at her.

This one just smothers.

Sakura hugs the book tight to her chest, heedless of the dirt and dust on it, and grimly carries on.

In a large room that looks like a fancy parlour, Sakura morbidly studies the fine porcelain plates, cups, and bowls and feels sick when she realizes her mother has a similar set for company. Gardenias instead of poppies.

What had Kakashi's mother been like? Sakura presses one hand gently to the glass of the cabinet and, when she pulls away, leaving a perfect handprint in the dust, she doesn't wipe her palm off.

Who were Kakashi's parents?

It's depressing to realize, again, how little she knows about her sensei. He graduated early, very early. Both his parents were dead. Most of the people he loved were dead.

(And some of them, she knows, by his own hand. He's never told her but when it comes to medical nin—Sakura knows them all, good and bad. Tsunade-shishou has seen to that.)

_But he's sharing this now,_ Sakura thinks, feeling warm inside.

It helps, a little, against the relentless sorrow.


	49. 2013: Day 21: Living Luck

Title: Living Luck  
>Author: Killaurey<br>Word Count: 200  
>Rating: T<p>

Written for Day 21 of the 2013 Last Fan Standing Challenge on KakaSaku's Dreamwidth community.

**Prompt: Good luck charm**

* * *

><p>"Can I have a kiss for luck?" Kakashi asks.<p>

Sakura glances over from her desk, where she's mired in paperwork about a new vaccine they're introducing, and glowers at him. He manages to look penitent while lounging against the window sill, packed and ready for a mission.

She's mad at him. They'd had a stupid fight that morning and even though she's cooled off enough to concede that was stupid, she hasn't cooled off enough to forgive him.

Pushing the chair away from her desk, Sakura stands and makes her way over to him.

"One kiss," she says.

It's sweet and precious and heated.

She's mad at him but, when he asks, she knows his mission is one he might not come back from.

Sakura can't deny him a good luck charm. Just in case.

"Come back," she orders. "So I can finish being angry with you."

He smiles, brushes her cheek with the pad of one thumb, and is gone.

Sakura looks out the window to see if she can spot him (she can't) and, eventually, goes back to her paperwork.

She's in a bad mood now, like before, but with him gone there's a different reason for it.


	50. 2013: Day 22: Sigh

Title: Sigh  
>Author: Killaurey<br>Word Count: 100  
>Rating: T<p>

Written for Day 22 of the 2013 Last Fan Standing Challenge on KakaSaku's Dreamwidth community.

**Prompt: Wish  
><strong>

* * *

><p>Sakura likes to believe that wishes can come true.<p>

She likes to wish that all her loved ones will survive to be old (not likely given that most of them are shinobi and the average age of a career Chuunin is a mere thirty-three), she likes to wish that one day she'll be as strong and gorgeous as Tsunade-shishou (that wish _will_ come true), she likes to wish that eventually her first sensei, who always ignored her will turn around and _notice _her.

(The words 'no chance in hell' spring to mind.)

Sakura doesn't really believe wishes will come true.


	51. 2013: Day 23: A Love Story

Title: A Love Story  
>Author: Killaurey<br>Word Count: 100  
>Rating: T<p>

Written for Day 23 of the 2013 Last Fan Standing Challenge on KakaSaku's Dreamwidth community.

**Prompt: Burning Letter (image prompt)**

* * *

><p><em>(I wrote you a love letter on vellum in scarlet ink.)<em>

In retrospect, she shouldn't have.

Not when each curve and swoop of every word brought home how far from _home_ she was.

_(I called you 'love' a thousand times. Will you write back saying the same?)_

If the letter is read, her mission would be over. The letter is her, on paper, entirely honest in every way. She'd be caught in mere seconds.

She burns the letter instead.

_(I promise; I'll write it again. Will you answer me then?)_

All that's left is smoke.

_(Wait for me. I'll remember.)_


	52. 2013: Day 24: Guide You

Title: Guide You  
>Author: Killaurey<br>Word Count: 500  
>Rating: T<p>

Written for Day 24 of the 2013 Last Fan Standing Challenge on KakaSaku's Dreamwidth community.

**Prompt: **

_I float on the streets that are empty  
>Take the path that the wind only knows<br>Tonight is the last time that I'll ever be here_

_There's an answer in the sound of a train_  
><em>There is wisdom past the bridge on the bay<em>  
><em>There's a lifetime through the fog, in the rain<em>  
><em>There's a beauty in walking away<em>

_It's never quite simple, it's never that safe_  
><em>It never seems perfect until it's too late<em>  
><em>It's never the right time to find a new way<em>

- Marie Digby, _Beauty in Walking Away_

* * *

><p>Her mom had always said that the dead couldn't lie. How could they? They were dead. What reason would they have to keep on hiding their secrets away when where they were… they couldn't hurt anyone.<p>

Sakura doesn't think her mom _meant _to lie to her.

But Rin is totally lying. Constantly.

It makes Sakura twitchy and she thinks that, if she had real nerves and hair and skin that she would have shaky nerves, hair raised on the back of her neck, and skin that's covered with goosebumps.

Rin is nice.

Utterly and completely and entirely _nice_.

No real person is that nice. Not unless they want something. Sakura believes this fully, which makes it impossible to trust Rin.

Well, okay, she trusts Rin when Rin says they're both dead. Sakura had already known that. But it's one small pebble in a sea of instinctive, intuitional _wrongness_.

Rin's all wrong.

Sakura doesn't know why, which is irritating, and she doesn't know why she hasn't gone—on yet either, which is distressing in another way.

Watching Kakashi watch the memorial stone, Sakura reaches out and touches the red ribbon he wears in memory of her.

Sakura doesn't think he even knows what a red ribbon even symbolised to her. It still leaves her feeling touched because he noticed enough to know that it mattered and, for Kakashi, that much is… something.

(Which is sort of pathetic, really, if she thinks about it for too long.)

Rin comes wandering up, her smile bright as she leans around Kakashi and peers at the stone. "Look," she says, "Minato-sensei and Obito-kun."

Sakura looks.

Kakashi doesn't notice that either of them exist.

"You're not on there," she says, frowning. "Kakashi said a long time ago that everyone he loved was on that stone."

Rin is silent for a long moment then she says, "I think, when he looks at it, he sees my name." She twists around, sending sparkles of incandescent light up around Kakashi to outline him like an angel even though he's the farthest thing from. "But I didn't die on a battlefield. This stone is for those who die in the line of duty."

That's another true thing that Sakura knows. After all, Sakura's name hasn't been added to the stone. She died in her own home on a day off. Why _would _she be added to the stone?

It's ridiculous but she sort of wishes she was anyway.

Sakura touches the ribbon Kakashi wears for comfort. It helps, some, to know she's remembered.

(But ribbons don't last as long as stones.)

"How did you die?" Sakura asks.

If Rin doesn't want to answer, she won't.

"I don't remember."

Sakura twists around to look at the other girl. "What?"

"I don't remember," Rin says again. She shrugs, like it's no big deal. "But I always figured that's why I'm stuck here."

Sakura's gaze drifts back to the stone. "But definitely not in the line of duty."

It's something to think about.


	53. 2013: Day 25: Paradigm Shift

Title: Paradigm Shift  
>Author: Killaurey<br>Word Count: 200  
>Rating: T<p>

Written for Day 25 of the 2013 Last Fan Standing Challenge on KakaSaku's Dreamwidth community.

**Prompt: Fireworks**

* * *

><p><p>

Ino finds Sakura sitting on a bench in the eastern side of town. "Hey," she says. "You've been gone two days. Your parents—"

Sakura looks at her with solemn green eyes. "You mean _you_. My parents don't care."

With a grimace, Ino shrugs. Sakura's right. "Yeah… well, what's up? Why haven't you been home?"

"Team Seven broke up," Sakura says.

Ino feels _terrible_. It must show on her face because—

"No," Sakura says, smiling slightly. "It's not that bad."

"… are you sure you're okay?"

"I realized," Sakura says, "that I'm better off without them. It was like a firework went off in my brain: all they did was hurt me and each other until we fell apart."

"I—" The worst part is, Ino knows it's the truth and can't deny it.

Sakura holds out one hand, looking mysterious and breakable and bizarrely powerful all at once. "Take me home, Ino," she says, then adds in a tinier voice, "Will you make sure I don't fall apart?"

Ino holds Sakura's hand tightly. "I'll do my best," she says. "We'll nurture that firework of yours, okay?"

Sakura just nods and they walk back in silence. Weary but triumphant somehow.


	54. 2013: Day 26: Smokescreen

Title: Smokescreen  
>Author: Killaurey<br>Word Count: 500  
>Rating: T<p>

Written for Day 26 of the 2013 Last Fan Standing Challenge on KakaSaku's Dreamwidth community.

**Prompt: Key**

* * *

><p>"Yamato," he said, "come in."<p>

The other man didn't bother with opening the door. Rather, he went through it—his facility with wood giving him an easy advantage in the Capital where most houses were made of the stuff.

He was a tall man, with a blocky frame and a blocky face, and Kabuto rather thought that was fitting for a man who controlled wood. "My lord," Yamato said simply.

"What have you found out about the riot?" Kabuto asked, sipping his wine so sparingly that he barely tasted it on his tongue. "How was it started? The bread prices haven't gone up yet- that's in the works for next week."

"It was the White Fang's son," Yamato reported, his voice emotionless. "He grabbed one of your servants and she screamed. People panicked."

"Which one?" he asked, pursing his lips. They'd told him they had no idea what had gone on but he could not blame them for that. They did not know him and, after all, there were more nobles who'd dismiss their servants over what had happened than would not.

"The dark-haired one," Yamato replied. "Sakura."

When the other man hesitated, Kabuto nodded for him to go on.

"The White Fang's son grabbed her and addressed her as 'princess'," Yamato said hurriedly. "She did not seem to understand what he meant, and put forth her effort to get away from him."

"And Ino was...?"

"She had been, ah, flirting with a man," Yamato said, "harmless enough; they'd been talking for perhaps five minutes when Sakura was grabbed. No attempt was made on Ino- I do not believe it was a concerted or planned attempt to keep Ino's attention off of what Sakura's situation was."

Kabuto nodded slowly.

"Describe the man Ino was talking to in your written report," he ordered, "and keep an eye on them."

"My lord... are they really the princesses?"

Kabuto gave him a long look. "Ask no questions that the answers would be unwise to obtain."

Yamato bowed and, taking his words as a dismissal turned to go.

"And Yamato," he said idly, coming to a decision about at least one facet of his dilemma. If the rebel nobles weren't stirring up trouble about the princesses then the king was more likely to keep his nose out of this mess. Just for long enough that Kabuto could come up with something to do about them. Perhaps send them to his summer home, out near Suna...?

The other man froze, half in the door, half out of it. "Yes, my lord?"

"Burn the rebels' hideout to the ground," Kabuto ordered, ignoring Yamato's flinch. "Force the rebels into the open. It'll give His Majesty something to do."

It was cruel to ask a man with such an affinity for wood to burn it.

But then, that was the key. What would Yamato do?

As Yamato left the way he'd came, Kabuto leaned back in his chair and smiled and smiled.

Starting now, things would be… _interesting_.


	55. 2013: Day 27: Silence

Title: Silence  
>Author: Killaurey<br>Word Count: 100  
>Rating: T<p>

Written for Day 27 of the 2013 Last Fan Standing Challenge on KakaSaku's Dreamwidth community.

**Prompt: "Let me talk to her."**

* * *

><p>"Let me talk to her," Kakashi says and something in his expression must have given away his feelings because the glare in Ino's blue eyes softens a tiny smidgen.<p>

"It won't do you any good," the blonde says, her voice almost—gentle.

He takes a deep breath and nods. "I know," he says. "I still… please, let me talk to her."

Ino judges him coolly and steps away from the door. "Touch none of the equipment," she warns. "You'll kill her."

He nods and steps inside.

Sakura rests on a bed, looking like she's only asleep.

_This is his fault._


	56. 2013: Day 28: Pain

Title: Pain  
>Author: Killaurey<br>Word Count: 100  
>Rating: T<p>

Written for Day 28 of the 2013 Last Fan Standing Challenge on KakaSaku's Dreamwidth community.

**Prompt: Sciaphobia  
><strong> 

* * *

><p>Kakashi knows there is a world beyond the scarlet-tinged shadows of pain and agony. He knows but cannot remember at the same time. What does sunlight look like?<p>

Who is Sakura?

These are things he cannot remember.

He knows pain that comes with a gaping maw and blood-stained teeth and sucking that rips through him. He knows the agony of being on fire but not burning and screaming until he has no voice left.

He is scared of the shadows because the shadows promised peace but only brought sorrow after sorrow, red-lit and cruel.

(Never has he been more alone.)


	57. 2013: Day 29: Absent Opposite

Title: Absent Opposite  
>Author: Killaurey<br>Word Count: 200  
>Rating: T<p>

Written for Day 29 of the 2013 Last Fan Standing Challenge on KakaSaku's Dreamwidth community.

**Prompt: Light**

* * *

><p>Shikamaru sat cross-legged with his back pressed against the temple wall. Sakura found his presence reassuring though utterly useless—he was unconscious.<p>

And part of her still couldn't believe _why_.

"So," Ino said, "you're dead."

A girl, maybe thirteen, stood in front of them, her arms akimbo. Her hair was short and she wore regulation black sandals and a tank top and shorts that were several decades out of style under a tunic of fishnet.

"That's right," the girl said. "I'm Sadako. Pleased to meet you."

No, Sakura didn't fully believe this. Ino looked more convinced but then this… this was so far buried in the Clan Confidential that Sakura _knew _Shikamaru was in deep shit if the fact that she and Ino had been let in here.

This was a place for Nara.

"Shikamaru said you had something to tell us," Ino said, skipping the pleasantries. "Something about light."

Sadako's smile was somewhat twisted. "What is shadow but the absence of light?"

"Isn't it darkness that's the absence of light?" Sakura asked.

"In the real world, yes," Sadako said agreeably. "But when it comes to jutsu… not so. Shadow is the opposite. Take a seat."

Slowly, they both sat.


	58. 2013: Day 30: True Tales

Title: True Tales  
>Author: Killaurey<br>Word Count: 500  
>Rating: T<p>

Written for Day 30 of the 2013 Last Fan Standing Challenge on KakaSaku's Dreamwidth community.

And this is the last prompt for this year! Hopefully this will happen again next year!

**Prompt: Rainbow swirls (picture prompt)**

* * *

><p>No one ever asks about Kakashi's mother.<p>

That doesn't bother him—he doesn't talk about her. He loves her fiercely, deeply, and she's gone.

Before she'd left (ravaged then taken by illness and pain) she'd told him stories. It had been a strange thing to him, a small child who was no child (already a proud shinobi) who'd never had a childhood (always had to be training) to sit on his mother's bed, with her frail arm around his shoulders, and listen to her voice tell him tales.

At first he'd hated it.

But his mother had had so little time left and she'd chosen to give that time to her stories and, even as a child, he'd understood that death was something his precious people could not come back from.

So, for her, he'd stayed and listened and eventually her words had drawn him in. Complex, frightening tales of mysterious lights that weren't dangerous at all—he never understood why, when they sounded so much like enemy jutsu but his mother had sworn they were harmless and, because they'd been her stories, he'd believed her.

She told him of blue's woes and how it sought to be a better, brighter self so that people would find comfort in being blue instead of just being sad. She told him of pink's struggles to find self-worth when everyone, even pink itself, believed it to be naught but a silly, frivolous colour incapable of more. She told him of how pink turned itself sharp and vicious and _reached _out to show them the true depths of its colours. Green dances, lolling, rolling about, playful; the colour of money, of spring, of new growing things. In his mother's stories, green was the only colour that did not strive for change.

She said it was because green, already, _was_change. (They should all try to be green.)

She taught him of orange, bright and merry and dangerous. Orange was wild, untameable colour that sought to out-do everyone else so that no one could say that they did not know _orange_.

Yellow was cooler and both bright and hard to see in turns. Yellow did what it wanted, when it wanted, in its own time and could never be led. Yellow was friends with pink and orange and green in turns but blue was a rare companion for yellow.

And then there was black, who was equally shunned and embraced because it was only due to black's influence that the colours shone so brightly, so deeply, that they could hurt the eyes of those who looked on them.

Kakashi tells no one of his mother and her stories. They are odd, treasured memories that are too precious to share. He loves her still and hopes that, even though he knows better, that she's with her strange lights rather than cold and buried in the ground with nothing after that.

(But sometimes he wonders if she'd been a seer and, if so, how had she known?)


End file.
